Episode Details

Polarization & Play

Polarization (def)—division into two sharply contrasting groups, sets of opinions or beliefs. When we stop seeing similarity or what is shared, but only see difference. When difference becomes a threat.

Play (def)— to engage in something for enjoyment or for sport. Be cooperative. Try something out.

I want to say, we are living in a polarized time. But I find myself questioning each word. I look for polarization and find it in my social media feed, in the news, in my own inner dialogue —as certain views and opinions claim their rightness about what I should or should not do, believe or say.

But, I don’t see such polarization in the setting sun, the migrating monarch butterfly who is sitting on this sunflower, here in my front garden. It seems like the monarch, the sun, the sky and serenading cicadas are not so concerned with the rifts of mind or media feed.

Is it disrespectful to place play near the gravity of polarization, when Webster warns that play has nothing to do with serious things and when politicians are using words like “civil war?”

Play is actually an important quality for awakening, for living in divisiveness—for it is an invitation to bring curiosity to righteousness, shame spirals, fear loops and the other players in polarized thinking.

Play as Liberation

The play I want to invite is the play of liberation. The play that is invoked in the Mahayana Sutra of Vimalakirti. A sutra that emerged in an in-between-time in Buddhist history. Where there were forces in power who believed they had the “right” teachings, the correct practices to transcend this painful world of suffering and enter nirvana.

Yet another view was emerging right in the midst of the dominant one. A view that seemed to turn the whole tradition on its head. A view, a practice, a teaching that pointed to the profound path of liberation that could be recognized by seeing through all views—awakening to the empty-yet-apparent nature of all form and concept.

This view pointed to a liberation that was based in the direct experience of interdependence, where no one is separate from anyone else—where this world and this body are the place and vehicle for living an awakened life. This was the emergence of the way of the bodhisattva.

An Extraordinary Improbability

The teaching came through a sick man living the life of a householder in India. His name was Vimalakirti and was considered a great bodhisattva and teacher of the non-dual way. When asked why he was sick Vimalakirti replied:

“I am sick, because the world is sick.”

Joan Sutherland in her book Vimalakirti and The Awakened Heart says this about the Bodhisattva.

“Vimalakirti embodies a number of provocative dualities in addition to being a sick bodhisattva: he’s a rich man who gives all of his money to the poor, someone who lives among family, but remains solitary, has children and frequents brothels but remains celibate, goes to bars, but doesn’t get drunk…The koans speak of him as an extraordinary improbability.”

The sutra in its in-between-ness is considered a precursor to both the koan tradition of Chan and the tantric tradition of the Vajrayana. The sutra has well-known characters from the Buddhist pantheon such as the elder monk Shariputra and the Bodhisattva Manjushri engaging in discourse with this layman Vimalakirti and the goddess who happens to live in his room completely unseen until the middle of the story.

The Goddess’s Transformations

At some point in the story the goddess makes her appearance, and we are told that she had always been there (another nod to the incipient koan tradition: how can someone who has always been here, appear?)

As she appears flowers rain down, falling to the feet of the Bodhisattvas but sticking to the robes o