Sadhguru: Being playful
always has been understood as irresponsibility.
Yes?
Do you know right from your childhood and probably to your children also you are doing this.
If they’re just playful, you think it’s irresponsible.
The most responsible way to live is that you’re playful with life.
It’s absolutely irresponsible to carry a long face and walk around on this planet.
Yes or no?
Participants: Yes
Sadhguru: Isn’t it absolutely irresponsible to walk around with misery?
Yes?
That’s the most irresponsible thing you can do. So being playful is not irresponsibility.
Being playful is being very responsible and responsive to life. Only when you’re playful, you can do that.
When you’re serious the world doesn’t exist for you - you and your nonsense.
Yes?
When you’re serious, it’s just about you and your nonsense.
The world and other life does not exist for you.
Only when you’re playful, you can pay attention to everything.
You can truly respond to everything in the world only if you’re playful.
Otherwise you cannot, just the burden of it will kill you.
Sadhguru: So playfulness is not a philosophy that you have to develop,
“I’m going to be playful. I’m going to be playful” - no.
Science is telling you the whole existence is just a dance of energy.
Looks like the forces that create this existence are always playful.
Always in this culture creation has been described as God’s play.
When they said “God’s play” many thinking people thought,
“Oh that fool is playing with my life, that’s why all this misery?”
The forces of creation are constantly at play. If they stop playing, you’re finished.
Yes?
All the basic forces in this… within the body itself,
they must be playing with full vigor, only then everything is nice.
If they stop playing or if they refuse to play, you’re done, you’re over.
So playfulness not just in your attitude,
this is not your attitude, this is the attitude of the creator, this is the attitude of the creation.
If you’re in tune with the creation and the creator, being playful is very natural.
Only when you’re not in tune with that, somewhere you got totally enslaved by the process of your mind,
your thought, your opinions, your ideologies, your rights and wrongs, your moralities,
then only you lost your playfulness.
If you’re in line with life, if you’re in line with creation or creator, you would naturally be playful.
You have started ignoring the larger creation and become too attached to your petty creation,
which is happening here (Gesturing-pointing to head), that is why all playfulness is gone.
If you’re in line with the larger creation there is no other way to be, you will be playful.
Only if one is playful, such a person can truly grapple with the problems in the world
without being affected by it and do his best about it.
If he doesn’t know how to be playful those problems will just eat him up.
The problems that exist in the world are not simple.
If you try to grapple with them without the necessary playfulness in you,
don’t ever think you are going to solve the problem.
You will just get gobbled up by the problem, that’s all that will happen.
It has eaten up any number of people. Isn’t it so?
Any number of people with good intentions, has it not swallowed?
Hmm?
Has it not swallowed the problems of the world?
Any number of people with very good intentions, have just been licked up by the existing situations.
You can only handle them if you are truly playful otherwise everything will be trouble.
Sadhguru: If you maintain just a few hours of playfulness in a day, about what you are doing,
you will see even your physical body will start functioning so much better.
Your sleep quota will come down and meditation becomes a natural process for one who is playful.
Because the moment you are playful, you’re not entangled with the things that you’re doing.
Once you’re not entangled with it, you’re not accumulating karma.
You’re doing yoga.
The process of living is not entangling, the process of living has become liberating.
So you are no more doing karma, you’re doing yoga with the activity that you perform.
Once you’re doing yoga through the day, definitely everything should get better, isn’t it?
For a beginner who is not yet accomplished, the activity is necessary; and if you don’t make the activity playful,
activity is killing, always, no matter what is the type of activity.
Sadhguru: There are different ways of (Laughs) passing through a situation, you know?
Mahabharata is a tremendous statement on this -
how different human beings pass through the same situations.
Almost everything that Krishna is going through, on a smaller scale, people around him are going through.
How they go through it and how he goes through it,
how different types of people go through it - the same situations -
Mahabharata is a tremendous document on that,
how different types of people of different levels of consciousness
exist and go through the same situations.
When there is some problem you’re traveling outside or you’re in the office… some problems arises,
if there are ten people, how these ten different people experience this little problem that’s come up? Hmm?
One person will pull his hair and freak out. Another person will pounce on somebody else.
Another person bangs his head.
Another person looking what he can do, another person (Laughs)…
Do you see this thing happen?
Same given situation.
Sadhguru: So fundamentally that’s what Mahabharata is,
that there are all types of people - good people, bad people, outright evil, absolutely virtuous,
various types of people.
If you look at it, every kind of human being that you can find in any society,
they are all there in Mahabharata - a whole range of people - greedy ones, absolutely selfless ones,
fearful ones, brave ones, valiant warriors, cowards,
every kind are there and they’re all being put through a whole intense drama.
And you look at each one’s experience,
it’s very different and the way he handles it is very different
and where he lands up in the end is very different.
Through this whole drama, of all the people Krishna is going through the maximum amount of drama,
but untouched
because he said, “Yogasthaha kuru karmani” - that means first establish in yoga and then act.
If you act without establishing yourself in yoga then your action will become an entanglement,
it doesn’t matter what you’re doing.
Simple things that people take up to do in their life…
After all for most of the people, ninety-five percent of the people in the world,
all that they have taken up is just to earn something for their survival, procreate, bring up their children, that’s it.
Just for this small drama that they have picked up for themselves…they wanted it -
a little business or a job, a home, wife, children, husband - this is it.
To manage this where they end up. Many of them end up in the insane asylums too.
Just doing this simple job.
Isn’t it so?
Yes.
They’ve not taken up the problems of the world.
They don’t want to be dharma goptas wanting to establish dharma in the world.
No such great responsibility they have taken up.
Just to earn their living, survive, procreate and die which every creature on the planet does,
for that see where people are ending up.
How many people are ending up total nuts? How many people are half way down there?
Yes?
Too many people, isn’t it?
It is taking an unusually heavy toll simple life process.
It is not necessary this way, but unfortunately it does go that way for many people,
simply because there is no playfulness in their way of existence.
There is no playfulness in the way they live. They’re too dead serious.
Sadhguru: Now these two things look contradictory. On one level we’re talking about intensity of passion,
devotion another level playfulness - that’s the whole thing.
If it’s passion you must burn with it. If you are halfhearted, you will not know what it is.
It just tortures you, you will not the benefit… you will not know the benefit of it.
You really have to burn,
otherwise you will not know what it is at all.
If you want to walk the path of devotion and you also want to save yourself - it doesn’t work.
The idea of devotion,
the idea of choosing the path of passion is that you want to burn up everything that is you,
so that only that which you are passionate about or devout about exists within you.
What you call as myself is burnt up in the simple process.
It is… for a thinking mind this looks like self-destructive…but unless you’re willing to burn up the limited,
another possibility never arises within you.
If really the other possibility has to touch you, you really have to burn.