Laugh Your A** Off! | The Spirit of Play in Zen

Рет қаралды 824

3 ай бұрын

Working on -- and failing at!! -- a creative project today I had a flashback to my youth, when I used to play. Remember that?? The feeling that anything was possible, creating your own worlds and living there!
As adults I think we forget how to play, or what play even is, because we're terrified of failure and we get stuck in past traumas which teach us to build up walls and then hide behind them.
I think you become an artist at something when you love to do it so much that you express the whole human condition through that activity -- like Tolstoy telling his stories, or Picasso and his paintings. I've often felt that a couple of the great Zen masters I've known were able to turn their lives into a kind of art form, and they did this in a very free-spirited and playful way. No fear, complete openness. These dudes were fun! (My teacher was able to turn his own constipation into a blast!! It became this great problem we were all trying to solve together!)
Back in the 90's we used to call this playful approach to life "finding your inner child." My teacher called it the laughing Buddha. "You must learn to manifest laughing Buddha!" he told me during one particularly wintery snowy cold wet horrible day.
Laughing Buddha and the spirit of play! That's what this video's about.
((Warning -- This video contains a flashback to an Ayhausca journey I took in the Amazon wherein imprinted upon the entire sky was the answer to the question I had brought to the ceremony, and that answer was . . . ? You guessed it: PLAY.))
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Пікірлер: 40

@4kassis 3 ай бұрын

Yup, that’s how I remember zen: very, VERY funny!

@Nalber3 3 ай бұрын

You're right, our wounds and traumas don't want us to play 😢 Healing is a process...which I feel can be playful too! 🙏

@zenconfidential25 3 ай бұрын

Absolutely!!

@TheJedynak 3 ай бұрын

To put it in the context of the focal point of Buddhism, is to ask 'how do you play with suffering?', I guess. Thanks for the dying body example.

@twistedpositions1 3 ай бұрын

No truer words. Thank you for the reminder.

@zenconfidential25 3 ай бұрын

You bet!

@vikifilip 3 ай бұрын

Thank you! When I am in the middle of my drama I try to stop and see the funny side of it!

@zenconfidential25 3 ай бұрын

Perfect!

@Perltaucher 3 ай бұрын

My first step in your channel and i‘m impressed like a child 😁. Good evening from Germany! 🙏🙏💡

@zenconfidential25 3 ай бұрын

Thanks and welcome!!!!

@dominicvallee 3 ай бұрын

Woah! If I had seen this video before our discussion, I would clearly have included that subject in our chat. Even the name of my podcast is somewhat based on this notion, that playfulness is a deeply "mystical" state. Good one, Jack! ✨👍🏻

@zenconfidential25 3 ай бұрын

I loved our podcast yesterday! Can’t wait to post it soon.

@dominicvallee 3 ай бұрын

@@zenconfidential25 Really enjoyed too man, and looking forward to sharing it! ✨

@kajetanpasztua7032 3 ай бұрын

I just love it!

@zenconfidential25 3 ай бұрын

@WJSpies 3 ай бұрын

Ayawaska bad idea, no matter the reason.. learn to be in relationship not in ayawaska escapism.. learn to laugh first at yourself, later everyone else.. only true fun. sm. edit: as I recall reading Allan Watts his nature (true one) was always to have fun first (inside humor lie the greatest of life's truths). ..I loved Alan Watts teachings (he had nothing to sell) ..also Leonard Cohen though very sad man knew when "closing time" arrived. ..he went out with a smile and a positive message. I can never disagree with his words and his ideas; faced the music and then himself.

@PRAR1966 3 ай бұрын

See how PLAY is suppressed by many modern educational establishment's...

@zenconfidential25 3 ай бұрын

Amen.

@LONDONFIELDS2001 3 ай бұрын

Byung Chul Han talks beautifully about "friendliness", and it's similar. let go. allow the warmth in and out.

@zenconfidential25 3 ай бұрын

Yes, I remember him talking about that, I think in his book about Zen. Thank you!

@jethrobradley7850 3 ай бұрын

This has made me want to go back to improv classes. Or clowning. At its best and least pretentious it is just a room full of adults allowing themselves to play again.

@zenconfidential25 3 ай бұрын

Oh gosh, improv is beautiful, yes goooo!!

@dayamay8221 3 ай бұрын

That's really interesting. I had a similar experience with the neon lights when I was doing my monastic training one night in France. The cat jumped on the bed and as I woke up I saw the word RELIGION in, as you said, big, bright neon lights! This was quite a few years ago but it stays with me. I have to say that I was completely sober at the time, which is probably even weirder!!😂 Cool, thanks. D

@zenconfidential25 3 ай бұрын

Wow. That's a great story. Best five line comment ever in one of my vids. Danke.

@ninasnow9055 3 ай бұрын

I wanna be a cheesy laughing Buddha :)

@zenconfidential25 3 ай бұрын

Velveta cheese or regular Swiss??

@fhoniemcphonsen8987 3 ай бұрын

THANKS 😁 Dude if I looked up serious in the dictionary I'd see YOU Keep on banging on the book Guessing you're aware the ads are back. Question what's the deal with sentient beings as in who what qualifies.

@zenconfidential25 3 ай бұрын

Hey my friend! What's the deal with sentient beings? Man that's probably a topic for a whole video…!!

@fhoniemcphonsen8987 3 ай бұрын

@@zenconfidential25 why ya gotta make things complicated?😁

@yolobanana9592 3 ай бұрын

And yet Kosho Uchiyama writes in "Opening the hand of thought" the following: It seems to me that we spend all our lives playing with toys. It begins as soon as we are born. The first toy is the nipple of the milk bottle. When we are a little older, we turn to dolls and teddy bears. After that, it’s do-it-yourself kits, cameras, and cars. At adolescence, we move on to sex, and then come study and research, competition and sports, along with earnestness in business and perhaps the search for fame. This is all just playing with toys! Right up to our death, we exchange one toy for another, and we end our lives having done nothing but play with toys. Doing zazen means to actualize the reality of life. Zazen is the self which is only the self of the universe, without any playing with toys. Zazen is like the time just before our death when all the toys have been taken away. Yet, even then, we look around for something to play with, if only for an instant.

@zenconfidential25 3 ай бұрын

I remember that quote. I have never forgotten it. Thank you.

@xlmoriarty8921 3 ай бұрын

Could you explain the difference between soto and rinzai especially concerning just sitting . Rinzai seems to be more focused on breathing while Dogen's style seems to discourage concentration on counting or the breathing in general and just let things be. Why should you give it all in the breathing in Rinzai? Concentration is blocking thoughts temporary.

@zenconfidential25 3 ай бұрын

Ultimately, there's no difference between the two ways of sitting. I think I must've misspoke in my video. But the way I was taught is to basically turn thinking into breathing, if that makes any sense.