Dusk Dancing
We are camping on the edge of East Lake in Newberry National Volcanic Monument. As night begins to draw a shade on the sun, the clouds are painted in golden and crimson hues. Night hawks begin their dance at dusk in wild and erratic flight as they dart about the sky. With their beaks open wide, they snatch insects from the air. Their knife-like wings effortlessly slice through the atmosphere, revealing the white stripe on the underside of their feathers.
Nighthawks (Chordeiles minor) are not really hawks. They are part of the caprimulgidae family of ground nesting birds. I imagine their swept back wings reminded someone of an accipiter in flight at night and so the name “common nighthawk” stuck. It is beautiful how humans assign names to life forms, breathing life into what the eye perceives in order to teach others how to respect these living symbols. This is the way indigenous people have always passed on knowledge.
Scientists have another approach through unique taxonomy, which helps the scientific community speak a shared language—but I rather like the common names. For instance, nighthawks are also called “goat suckers” because of the legend about them sucking the milk of goats. The scientific family name, caprimulgiform, actually translates as, “I milk goats.” Although this has no basis in fact, the name persists.
What captures my attention, however, is the nighthawk’s graceful evening flight. I envision dakinis, literally “sky dancers,” performing pirouettes alongside the birds. The species name, Chordeiles, also mirrors this evening ritual, as it translates to “dance at night.” While not all scientific Latin names are so apt, in this case, it is spot on. Yet, the name does not entirely do justice to the visceral experience of watching nighthawks at dusk.
I think the great Buddhist masters knew this about everything. Real understanding cannot be held within a single word or name. In the same way, the nighthawk mirrors how we innately perceive our wisdom—darting about in the spaciousness of our emptiness nature. We are the sky and the bird at the same time; form and emptiness. The realization grabs our attention and dissolves our conceptions. As Dudjom Rinpoche so insightfully expressed, “Now, conceptualization falls apart with the abandon of a madman.”