Of frogs and fun

When Ken Feit, a "travelling fool" and ex Jesuit priest, first taught me how to create the "Frog of Enlightenupment", I received it from him as a gift, a moment of high silliness, and a new friend. The Frog has become part of my teaching, because it is all those things: a gift, a silliness, and a friend. If you visit my DeepFUN Apparel store, you'll even find, among other Froggish apparel, Frog of Enlightenupment Boxer Shorts.

At the time of Ken's gift, I didn't realize how profound of a gift it was. I recently found an article called "All About Frogs," written by musician Stephen Nachmanovitch, author of Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art, in which he writes:

"In Zen Buddhism, there is a long tradition of drawing pictures of frogs and talking about frogs. Frogs were very interesting to Zen and Taoist masters throughout the centuries. There's a famous poem by Bashô, on which this painting is partly a comment:

"An old pond.
A frog jumps in.
Plop!

"...Plop! in a way, is the Zen equivalent of "Let there be light." Plop! and "Let there be light" represent a moment of creativity that is potentially available to us at every moment, right before our eyes, right under our fingertips. But usually we are too busy looking out for flies."

Note to self: frogs and fun are often deeper than we think.