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Since the dawn of time, when language and symbolic pictograms formed to express ideas, storytelling brought about cohesion among those who assembled together to listen. There was a thirst to belong and to learn. According to Lani Peterson at the Harvard Business Publishing, there is a science behind storytelling: “It was central to meaning-making and sense-making” by which “our minds form and examine our own truths [beliefs].”

Both DAUGHTERS OF THE DANCE and CHOIR OF CLOISTERED CANARIES do just that. More importantly, They both tell a multi-layered story of mixed relationships, scars, wounds, fears, change, loss, renewal, and happenstance. The romance is felt in each story, but it also deals with historical truths that cannot be ignored.

Beneath all of all of the events and feelings, some of the inquisitive characters of the novels were in search of something greater than themselves, beyond such questions as ‘why are we here? and ‘who are we?”. Others may have already understood and reached an awareness that could not be shaken to the core. To put it differently, the theme of each novel is to explore its deeper meaning while in the throes of impermanence.

The tightness one feels (referred to as suffering and dissatisfaction in Buddhism due to impermanence) is a constant companion today as it was yesteryears. For many, it was always to meet the need of food and shelter, water, air and the like (biological and physiological needs); for many, it was personal needs and the like (safety needs) and other needs that can be summed up as deficiency need. Then there are the growth needs, which are much a part of the theme of each novel. Nonetheless, both deficiency needs and growth needs can coexist and often do.

In Daughters of the Dance, the theme is embraced by intimacy (including dysfunctional intimacy) and trust, esteem needs, as well as aesthetic needs (the enchantment of the danse du ventre) in a world of trade in oil conflict. In Choir of Cloistered Canaries, in addition to esteem needs, it was cognitive needs—curiosity, exploration, knowledge, and understanding of the known/unknown past and present/potential technologies—by Leitis and Drew amid global connections.

As a clue, the above-illustrated symbols speak to the transcendental … to transcend beyond the illusory Self.

The finding: Wisdom of spontaneous awareness in the expansive space of all things—empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. When not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present. From The Lotus-Born: The Life Story of Padmasambhava.