Playfulness And Reverence – In Gita Verse 18.57 In all activities just depend upon Me and work always under My protection. In such devotional service, be fully conscious of Me.
Krishna says the mundane life is the circumference. It has to be enjoyed so deeply, that you start finding in it the sacred, the divine. The divine is nothing but the depth of diving into this moment, into this world, into this life, into this body.
This verse says that playfulness and reverence are not two separate things.
If playfulness goes to its deepest core, there is a reverence arising out of it spontaneously. It is not a contradiction to it. But because all the traditions in the past have made them contradictory, the human mind has become accustomed to thinking in terms of them being two different things, with a gap which is almost unbridgeable.
Playfulness is condemned by the past heritage of man, and respect for the divine is praised. It is the same problem in different words which have been synthesised in Zorba the Buddha.
Zorba is – playfulness. Buddha is – reverence.
They have been kept separate for centuries, and that has harmed both. All that is divine became too serious. It lost the human touch. It became stone dead. It is not a coincidence that all the gods finally turned into stone statues. Respect cannot allow them to be alive, give them the guts to be alive – you may find difficulties in respecting the divine.
For Krishna to be alive means to have a sense of humour, to have a deep loving quality, to have playfulness.
We have made respect so contrary to life that the people we respect, we almost kill. We don’t allow them to be human – if they are human they lose their respectability. So our saints are almost dead; only then can we give them respect, which we think is divine. But it is not respect for the divine, it is respect for the dead.
Krishna is absolutely against all life-negative attitudes – and respect for the divine has been life-negative.
To make it life-affirmative, playfulness, a sense of humour, love, and respect have all to be joined together.
This is the great alchemy which will produce Zorba the Buddha.
It is almost inconceivable in terms of the past.
Reverence for life is the only respect for the divine, because there is nothing more divine than life itself.
Anything other than life is going to be dead, and there is no point in being respectful to the dead. It is dangerous, because your respect is going to kill your own livingness, your own qualities of life. At least it is going to poison them: you will feel a certain condemnation of yourself. If your respect is for the dead, then you cannot be fully alive.
Krishna says don’t call it “respect for the divine.” It would be better to call it “reverence for life.” And then there is no problem. Then playfulness is part of being alive; it is the overflowing energy of life. It can become a dance, it can become a song, it can become any kind of creativity.
Once we stop thinking of respect for the divine and start thinking of respect for life, reverence for life, then the bridge becomes immediately possible. Then playfulness, then livingness, and all that is implied in life – very small moments of joy – suddenly take on a spiritual meaning too.
Nobody has ever tried to give them any spiritual meaning. In fact, all the religions have joined in the conspiracy to condemn living moments in life and have made ideals which are lifeless. The more a person becomes lifeless, joyless, forgets laughing, forgets everything that life consists of – this is called the great renunciation – the more he becomes respectable as a saint.
He is almost in his grave, not in his body. He has condemned his body. He has condemned his senses.
Even the fragrance of a flower he has renounced. The beauty of a sunset he has renounced. The joy of being with friends, eating with friends or just chit chatting with friends he has renounced. He has no friends; he has only people who respect him. And there is a great distance between him and the people who respect him – and the distance is from life.
Krishna says who is full of life worshipping death, and life trying to achieve respectability at the cost of losing livingness. This has destroyed all of human nature, its harmony; and it has created a dichotomy between the soul and the body, between this world and that world.
There is only one world: this world.
And when you go deep into it, you find that world hidden in this world. There is no contradiction between this and that. This is the circumference, and that is the centre. And to get to that, you have to dive deep into this.
“This” means Zorba. And “that” means Buddha.
Zorba is the circumference – Buddha is the centre. But no circumference is possible without a centre, and no point can be called a centre without a circumference. We find no difficulty in geometry, but in life’s geometry we have created a contradiction between the centre and the circumference.
For Krishna if you can go deep into this world and find the divinity. Once you have found the divinity from this world then all activities just depend upon Krishna and work always under his protection. In such devotional service, be fully conscious of Him.
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