No Road Map
THERE CANNOT BE ANY MAP TO THE LAND OF PLAYFULNESS. All maps lead to seriousness. Playfulness is when all maps have been burnt down. There is no way to playfulness, because playfulness is not a goal and cannot be a goal. When you forget about goals, when you are not going anywhere, when the very idea of going is dropped, then herenow playfulness starts growing in you, happening in you.
Playfulness is not then and there: it is herenow. So how can there be a road-map? You are not to go: you are just to be.
Seriousness is goal-oriented. And even when a serious person starts playing, he transforms the quality of the play – it becomes a game; it is no more play.
That is the difference between a game and a play. When a play becomes serious, it becomes a game.
A play is something in which a goal is not at all concerned. The very being together is beautiful!
For the sheer joy of it! In a better world, with more understanding, games will disappear – there will only be plays. There will be nobody as a winner, nobody as the defeated – because the very idea of defeating and winning is inhuman. There is no NEED for it! Why can’t we enjoy the sheer togetherness? There should be no counting, no marking. There should not be any result out of it.
If you are in love with playing football, play football! Just play it! Don’t look for the result. If the result comes in, you become serious, the play is destroyed; it has become almost businesslike. Enjoy the sheer outpour of energy. Enjoy the moment – don’t sacrifice it for anything else.
That’s what LEELA IS, playfulness is.
Be courageous! and laughter will follow. Be courageous and live intensely! and you will not need to ask how to be playful. Out of the maximum, playfulness happens of its own accord – because when you live at the maximum you start overflowing. That overflowing of energies is what playfulness is – there is no map to it, there is no technique to it. Just understanding.
