Note: In this work, and my other works, "playful" does not refer to having fun like kids playing games. "Playful" signifies such qualities as movement, creativity, aliveness, unpredictability, paradox, and surprise ~ but it can be fun, too.
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The English "paradox" derives, through Lain, from Greek para and doxa, "contrary to opinion." Yes, there is an inherent contrariness in truth. Truth stubbornly taunts us and, like trying to grab a wet fish, slips from our grasp before we even can grasp.
When we look deeply enough, we see truth does not make sense. A wise person learns to live in that nonsense, and they find the nonsense makes absolute sense. Sitting right there in the stubborn contrariness of truth becomes a relief, a joy - one celebrates the evasive and vague.
This love affair with truth becomes playful. Paradox is one of the playful expressions of truth, and truth at times hiding, refusing to show itself. All play, so play with, for there is no other way to live with truth.
Paradox can be seen in the cosmic theories of science or the simple home-spun, odoriferous emissions of some 59 percent nitrogen, 21 percent hydrogen, 9 percent carbon dioxide, 7 percent methane, 4 percent oxygen, and 1 percent hydrogen sulfide gas and mercaptans that leaves persons making funny looking faces, laughing, and sends them soon scattering for fresh inhalations of plain, good ole air. Such is a fart.
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The late Sodo Sawaki (Japan), a mendicant Zen teacher in China, asked, "We cannot even share a fart with another, can we?"
*Kosho Uchiyama Roshi. Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo.
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as says the homeless sage no fart sharing ~ right? from where comes a fart? to where goes a fart? when does the not-fart become a fart? when does the fart unbecome a fart? who knows? ~ a fart is a fart like you like I only one moment no beginning no end we are and each is one moment a myriad in one moment we are each alone the one moment one with everyone no one shares a fart ~ right? so never alone always alone you and I and we so stop trying to grab the fish
*brian k wilcox, july 2018
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So, there is the paradox ~ a fart, the scent of a rose, you, I, every life form is part of this undivided, seamless life, yet alone. The rich and the poor equally belong to the whole. The corporation, the church, the storage facility, and the abandoned old barn belong to the whole. "Father," "Son," and "Holy Spirit" equally belong to the whole. Yet, belonging means, too, alone.
Or, we could say, entering fully into aloneness, we find a depth of community we cannot discover and enjoy by simply immersing ourselves in community. Community is diluted when persons intolerable of solitude use others to hide from solitude ~ and that is what much, if not most, community is... a hiding place.
On the other hand, solitude can easily be diluted by resistance to community. Then solitude becomes isolation. Yet, one could spend almost all their time separate from others and live in and as community, for community is not about how much time one shares the same space or activity or talk with others.
To use Christian imagery, the Father is the Father, for the Father shares a likeness and communion with the Son and Holy Spirit. The Father is only the Father within the paradox created by oneness with the Son and Holy Spirit. If the Father cannot be the Father apart from the Son being the Son and the Holy Spirit being the Holy Spirit, there is no Trinity. The Trinity is an image speaking of the nature of all life forms and the whole of life, not merely a Christian doctrine.
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Each time we stop in prayerful silence, we invite ourselves to relax in the paradoxes that point to ineffable Truth. We watch the ego try to escape by trying to get ground under the feet, so to speak, yet each time, like a slippery fish, Truth eludes us and we remain with groudlessness. And we are invited to play, to appreciate we are a slippery fish.
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My work is playful. I enjoy using paradox, contrast, the odd, and the "what in the heck!" to introduce a jolt of the unexpected, the unanticipated. Life does not proceed in a straight line. Life is full of surprises. Adventure dies inside the status quo. Outside, in open space, exploration, and experimentation it thrives.
That is a way Life wakes us up and keeps waking us up. Spiritual transformation and liberation are not first about information. We use information to be thrown outside into the open expanse, outside our sweaty cacoons of habitual thinking and acting. Playfulness is transforming. Playfulness is the Wind moving... who knows where from and to where.
Gospel of John 3.8 ~
Wind blows where it will, you hear its sound but don't know from or to so those born of Wind
Greeek, pneuma, wind, breath, spirit
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Sitting on this bench, some would say meditating, persons outside moving and talking, traffic moving along the highway. Sitting here, no one knows I am here. Surrounded, I am alone. I find something native about this, comforting, and death is not the scary thing it sometimes appears to be. I think it appropriate to call this home. Here, hands on thighs, butt on board, face slightly tilted, eyes lightly shut, nowhere to go and nothing to do, I sit. I was born here, live here, will die here ~ always here, right here. No one was born with me, lives with me, will die with me. I sit with everyone, alone. I relax. I notice breath breathing. I have learned not to try to grasp the fish. Paradox swims around me; I smile, we play together, timeless children.
*Use of photography is allowed accompanied by credit given to Brian K. Wilcox and title and place of photographs.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
