Living Authentically in the Illusion of Life ... Playing Cards with Your Dragons The Tao of Funny God: What Andy Kaufman and the Turkish and Occupy Protesters Teach Us “When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you: pull your beard, flick your face to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.” – John Lennon If you want to get an idea of the funny-god/silly-god concept I am presenting, it is good to see the way it has been exemplified among progressives and in activism. Look to the Turkish resistance of 2013, the worldwide Occupy movements beginning in 2011, and to the activist resistance in America in the Sixties. Protesters confronted policemen and military with bayonets by placing flowers in their guns in the Sixties. In Turkey, one man read from a book of philosophy to the line of police. The resistances in Turkey, Brazil, Hungary, the United States, the Ukraine, and many more Occupy events worldwide took to activities such as dressing as clowns and grinning at police lines; they hugged and kissed the police at times. One man took a giant pencil and aped that he was attempting to rub off a paint splatter on the shield of a policeman. Back at Gezi Park in Turkey, in between confrontations, these activists waltzed in the streets wearing gas masks; they gave performances where ballet and other dancers, despite wearing gas masks, showed off their skills and brought happiness to their audiences. Mimes, musicians, actors, and dancers frolicked and put on skits. They painted, danced, performed, practiced yoga, painted faces, drummed, strummed, and plinked. They played. Freed, temporarily, from the confines of the societal straitjacket of normality, their imaginations exploded and they were euphoric. They confronted the police while playing guitars. Threatened with being attacked and ousted from nearby Taksim Square, the Turkish resisters brought in pianos and filled the night with music. Mothers and sisters linked hands and arms and formed a circle around the targeted protesters to keep the police away. As journalists Jody Sabral and Zynep Erdim phrased it for the BBC, “Revolutions take commitment and determination … are often messy and confusing…. Revolutions can also be funny.” I would add, and playful. In Brazil, during their Occupy protests, also in 2013, one man, confronted with attacking police and a gun, aped a karate stance of a swooping bird. If you want to gain a greater understanding of the funny-god/silly-god concept in general, a great way is to see the movie of Andy Kaufman’s life, Man on the Moon. The comedian Andy Kaufman lived the idea; he embodied it. He was an enlightened spiritual master in this regard, along with being a comic genius. He left a grand legacy of how to live authentically in this illusion of life and transcend it. Andy Kaufman, like the pro wrestler act that became one of his shticks, created a drama in life of his own making and goofed on us all. Not a little goof; in his life and career he had fun with everyone; there were few people who saw a serious side. He held life lightly, experimented, and played. If, as Sathya Sai Baba says, life is God’s leela, or play, then Andy Kaufman lived his life in a Creator’s mind; he was a silly god … a funny god. What is the meaning of these development and events? A good deal of what follows looks into these unique, creative actions and the unusual Trickster approach they are bringing to bear upon the most intractable problems the world is facing right now. It shows how this approach, this Tao of Funny God, is not only important but is necessary right now. It looks into another facet of the Necessary Hero as detailed in a parallel work of mine, Wounded Deer and Centaurs (2014). What is this Necessary Hero, what is this facet, and why is all of this imperative right now? These acts are indicative of a transcendent stance toward life. They are the attempt to go beyond the clashing of forces to a larger and happier perspective within which all people can find a home. These people know that the cycles of violence, of attack and then resistance, can only be ended by taking a stance outside them. By demonstrating an elevated response they attempt to shift the dynamic to a higher plane of events. And sometimes they succeed. Police have been known to tear up, to utter words of support and consolation, to drop their shields and join the protesters, to smile and hug back, however tentatively. This response seeks to win over the opposition through example, thus eliminating it, rather than out and out confronting it and seeking to destroy it using the same violent methods being used on them. These folks have an astute understanding of history, which has seen, time after time, that struggle begets more struggle, that the “new boss” risen up becomes much like the “old boss,” needing then, at a later time, another uprising to install another “new boss.” Many of them, aware of the intransigence or their own unwanted patterns or cycles of emotion and feeling, have gained wisdom in how to go beyond them. They see these cycles of history likewise — as endless reenactments, requiring a stance outside of them for real change to occur. They are impelled into a creative alternative as a reaction to the futility that is inherent in the continuation of these cycles.... [More coming…. Excerpted from a work-in-progress: Funny God: The Tao of Funny God and the Mind’s True Liberation]
Posted on: Sat, 07 Jun 2014 20:22:39 +0000
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