Dancing in the Dharma: The Life and Teachings of Ruth Denison

by Sandy Boucher

Ruth Denison was one of the great innovators in the early years of Buddhism in the West. In this portrait of her extraordinary life, from a youth in Nazi-dominated Germany to the center of the counterculture in the sixties and seventies, Boucher captures Denison's distinctive voice and the journey of her remarkable spirit.

Genres: Buddhism

264 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2005

Reviews

[robin friedman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Teaching Dharma In The Desert

I came upon "Dancing in the Dharma", a biography of the Buddhist teacher Ruth Denison, by chance. I read the book because I have been studying Buddhism and meditating for several years, but I had not heard of Ruth Denison. This authorized biography of Denison is written by Sandy Boucher, a long-time student of Denison's who has become an author of books on Buddhism and a well-known teacher in her own right. The book discusses Denison's impact on Boucher. At the time she began her Buddhist practice, Boucher was a social activist devoted to feminist and other causes. She retains her strong social commitments but was able to learn to turn and look within with her commitment to Buddhism. The book is strongly flavored with Boucher's own political activism, feminism, and lesbianism -- traits Ruth Dension does not share -- and the book offers an interesting interplay between Boucher's own story and that of her subject.

Ruth Schaefer was born in a rural area of East Prussia and came to young adulthood during WWII. As an adolescent and young woman in her early 20s she joined the Nazi party and supported its efforts while working as a schoolteacher. With the end of WWII and the allied occupation, Denison faced a difficult time and was raped repeatedly by allied soldiers. She secured passage to the United States where she ultimately met and married Henry Denison. Henry Denison was independently wealthy and a spiritual seeker who had been a monk at one time. Denison and Ruth had a difficult marriage, but it lasted for 42 years until Denison's mental illness and death.

Boucher offers an excellent account of Ruth Denison's introduction to Dharma and of her many teachers. Her first teacher was a woman named Charlotte Selver who did not teach meditation but rather taught Denison a sense of bodily awareness and movement that she ultimately integrated into her meditation teaching. Denison studied with the famous Burmese lay teacher U Ba Khin who was intent on spreading the Buddha's teaching -- the Dharma -- to the West. U Ba Khin taught a form of meditation known as insight meditation or Vipassana. U Ba Khin authorized Denison to teach, but he limited Denison to teaching women. Denison studied with a variety of Buddhist teachers in Asia and the United States from other traditions giving her Buddhism, with the combination with Charlotte Selver's teachings, an eclectic, unorthodox flavor, consistent with her own personality.

Denison gradually established a reputation as an gifted, if eccentric teacher and slowly built a meditation center in the Mohave Desert of California near Joshua Tree known as Dhamma Dena. Although she is not a feminist, she led the first all-women meditation retreat in the United States and is best-known for her work in bringing meditation and Buddhist teachings to women. But Denison did not limit her teachings to women. She has taught Buddhism and meditation to both sexes.

Boucher's biography captures well the difficulties she experienced during her years with Denison. She describes Denison as difficult and controlling at times and as a person who could be harsh towards others and insensitive to the difficulties that others, particularly Denison's many Jewish students, could feel about her early Nazi past. But Boucher grew to learn to accept her teacher with her eccentricities and her failings. She offers a portrait of a unique, strongly willed woman who combined her talents for bodily movement and dance with a deep understanding of Buddhist teachings of change, impermanence, suffering, and ignorance.

Among the best parts of this book is the next-to-final chapter, "A Teaching" in which Denison shows great insight in teaching Boucher about forgiveness and about the need to let go of grudges.

Boucher has written a good biography of a complex individual. Denison's life reminded me of another famous German woman who emigrated to the United States and became a Buddhist teacher. Ayya Khema also came to adulthood during the Nazi years when together with her family she fled Germany. Khema came to the United States and after several failed marriages and raising her children she became a Buddhist nun. Khema and Denison knew each other and I would have liked to have learned more about their thoughts of each others work. This book will appeal to readers who are interested in the spread of Buddhism to the West.

Robin Friedman

[Melinda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished reading this book and loved it so so much, I sent a letter to the author and then lent the book to my therapist. (See below)
Also, the spirits and the Universe in general are playful sassy beings as we know. I laughed heartily when she asked me if I am someone who has attended retreats with this wonderful creature Ruth (Denison)...Ruth, is of course the name of my beloved white Abysinian feline who passed in January....

Dear Melinda,
Thank you so much for your appreciative words on Dancing in the Dharma. You definitely got what I was trying to do.
As to crossing paths some day, I'll let you know when I'm doing things up in Washington or Oregon and maybe one day you'll find yourself out west and come.
Again, I so much appreciate your letting me know how the book spoke to you.
Sandy
p.s. Are you someone who has attended retreats with Ruth?


From: melindareidl@gmail.com
Dear Sandy
I just finished reading \'Dancing in the Dharma\'. Thank you for telling such a rich, honest, heart-felt and human story of transformation, through this unique and wonderful character that is Ruth Denison. I really enjoyed your warm \'self-conscious\' and courageous telling of your own story as it wove into the story of Ruth. This book is such a noble service to the feminine face of buddhism and to \'contemporary\' feminism and to the human path of unfolding.
Great writing.
I look forward to crossing paths with you some day.
With Gratitude & Blessing,

Melinda (from Toronto Ontario, Canada)

[MaryJo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sandy Boucher is a well known writer on women and American Buddhism. I learned a lot from reading her Turning the Wheel when it was first published in 1988. Denison is celebrated as an early teacher of Buddhism in the US, one of the first women. Denison is known for bringing in body centered practices, something she got from studying movement with Charlotte Selver. Denison was born in Prussa in 1922, endured the harshness of WWII and it aftermath in Germany. She migrated to the US in 1957. In LA Ruth met Henry, the man whom she would marry. Henry's circles included many counterculture figures of the 1960s and 1970s including people like Alan Watts and Timothy Leary. Henry was already a practicing Buddhist and made frequent trips to Asia. (He met Selver through Eric Fromm.) Selver’s teachings corresponded with Ruth’s way of being in the world, and he introduced Ruth to them. She absorbed what Selver taught and made it her own, and the basis for teaching she would do. Known as the person who introduced all female retreats to American Buddhism, Ruth was clearly an innovator. In the 1970s Ruth began teaching on her own, and acquired land in the Mojave dessert where she founded her retreat center, managing to maintain her never-orthodox realtionship with the aging Henry and her own expanding career. Boucher studied with Dennison there, off and on starting in the 1980s. Dennison allowed Boucher access to her papers, and also gave long interviews for the book which is both Dennison’s story and a story about changes in American Buddhism. As in her previous book, Turning the Wheel, Boucher is interested in the shift from a highly intellectualized, male practice of Buddhism in the US to a more body centered, and female practice. Ruth’s voice dominates the book; it is the voice of an old woman who has lived long and survived many difficult things, and is now at peace with her life.

[Rivera Sun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting reflections on the life and work of Ruth Denison. It is more of a biography than a deep delving into spiritual philosophy, but then again, there's a lot of philosophy on the roadside of this woman's incredible journey from Nazi Germany to the American 60's counter-culture to the Californian desert. The stories of Ruth Denison's life are surreal, mind-blowing, and dominated by the force of her personality. The wisdom comes in succinct doses after the stories. Several times I paused, reflecting on the depth of thought portrayed.

[Zan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very inspiring and touching biography of a remarkable woman, buddhist teacher Ruth Denison.

I love it when people live through harrowing times and instead of closing down, blaming and feeling sorry for themselves, they open and learn and grow and thrive and rejoice. What a teacher!

I'm so glad there are women like this in the world.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is more a biography than a dharma book, though there are definitely some tidbits in there. I recently learned of Ruth Denison during her final days. After reading this book, I wish I'd had the chance to meet her.

[Adrienne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating biography of an amazing woman hope I get out to Dharma Dena before she passes.

[Torgeir · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another must read book for anyone who is trawling for anecdotes from the Burmese meditation teacher U Ba Khin.