The Playful Wisdom of the Holy Fool
Children play out their world. In play, everything is possible — opposites dissolve, identities shift, and the rigidity of reality gives way to boundless creativity. Play creates a space for zero, a state of non-identified existence. Throughout history, children and holy fools of all cultures have taught us the wisdom of humour and lightness as a way of life.
The Playful Nature of Being
My grandchildren are visiting. The entire living room carpet transforms into a branching network of a Brio wooden railway—stations, signal boxes, cranes, bridges, and crossings complete the landscape. Lena and Maila are busy building a children’s hospital out of wooden bricks: an operating theatre, a large operating table, and several rooms with 20 beds.
“There could be an accident,” explains Maila. The train starts to move. Lena has filled all the carriages with Playmobil figures. The train’s rear strikes a bridge pillar on the second curve and derails. The disaster unfolds.
The children excitedly call for help. A rescue train is dispatched to the scene, ferrying the injured to the hospital. “Grandad, can you play a child who has broken their arm?” I comply and lie on the couch—the “operating table.” Within moments, Lena and Maila assume the roles of emergency doctor and nurse, donning imaginary white coats. The situation is serious, yet they can hardly contain their laughter.
After an elaborate series of “sedative injections,” Lena wraps a “plaster cast” around my arm, gradually extending it to my upper arm, then my legs. Two thick plasters are placed on my head despite my protests that only my arm is broken. The game is absurd, spontaneous, and deeply joyful.
Children construct entire worlds through play. Rules emerge and vanish, disasters are reversed, and battles resolve into laughter. In their world, catastrophe transforms into salvation, solemnity into delight, and death into resurrection. Within this fluid reality, everything is possible—an infinite, ever-mutable presence.
If you do not become like children …
Jesus said:
Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (*1).
The Indian philosopher and poet Rabindranath Tagore reinterprets this passage:
God honours us when we work, but He loves us when we play (*2).
Does this statement not sound paradoxical—even absurd—in today’s world? We live in a system governed by rationalization, efficiency, and rigid structures. There is little space for creative exploration, for playful engagement with life’s possibilities.
Yet, the great transformation—both in individual lives and on a planetary scale—demands precisely this shift: the loosening of identification with rigid ideals, personal narratives, and fixed emotional attachments. It invites us to transcend dualistic thinking and embrace a deeper, more fluid consciousness rooted in love, openness, and non-attachment.
In their earliest years, children remain closely connected to this primordial state of being—the formless creative source where all is possible. As adults, however, we accumulate layers of conditioning, encasing ourselves in rigid identities and judgments.
Play offers a way back to this primal consciousness, a realm beyond opposition and division:
The primal consciousness is beyond change and non-change. When our true nature is realized, it becomes evident that silence and noise are but opposites created by the mind. Everything already exists within primordial stillness. The world’s movement is identical to immobility. Be still and recognize; be in motion and recognize. Everything is dancing emptiness. (*3)
As the Tao Te Ching reminds us:
The heavy is the root of lightness; that which remains at rest is the master of movement.”(*4)
The Myth of the Holy Fool
A world obsessed with identification, rationalization, and purposefulness requires a counterbalance—an oppositional force, a disruptor, a fool. Across cultures and centuries, the jester has embodied this role, a living contradiction to rigid norms.
Till Eulenspiegel exposes human greed and folly. Hans Wurst is more foolish than the fools he mocks. Mulla Nasruddin, the wise Fool of the Arab-Persian world, blends humour and wisdom. Pierrot, the melancholic clown, and Harlequin, the clever trickster, have deep roots in European theatrical tradition. With his red nose, the circus clown emerged in the 18th century to disrupt structured performances. Even the Church permits a temporary upheaval—carnival—a sanctioned moment of reversal and revelry.
The Heyoka is more than a mere jester among Indigenous North American traditions. He is a sacred paradox, a wise and benevolent disruptor. A healer, teacher, and guide, he embodies the fluidity of being. (*5)
The Heyoka clown stands both inside and outside his community—respected, yet outcast. His authority is divine, and his mission is to dismantle fear of guilt, punishment, pain, and even death. In the Jicarilla Apache creation myth, the Heyoka leads people from darkness to light.
He aims to shake people loose from their rigid views and stagnant emotions. He overturns rituals, exaggerates traditions, and makes a spectacle of human folly—not to ridicule but to heal. He embodies contradiction: the gluttonous trickster who stuffs himself shamelessly, the self-deprecating Fool who stumbles over his own feet, the mirror in which people see their absurdities reflected. Through laughter, he liberates. Through play, he reconnects the tribe to the divine. He is the ultimate transformer, the bridge between worlds (*5).
The Path of the True “Zero”
The Fool, the dolt, the outcast—these figures are “zeros.” They wield no power yet transform the world through presence, humour, and truth. The Fool remains authentic because he refuses to be confined by imposed identities. He takes the “fool’s leap,” following the path of the heart and embracing the absolute present.
Are we not all such fools at our core? Beneath our accumulated identities and beliefs, we are essentially whole—healthy to the core. The Fool invites us to meet our contradictions with laughter, look our fears in the eye, and embrace our inner “zero.”
True freedom arises where opposites coexist. Recognizing our contradictions, embracing imperfection, and welcoming discomfort are all part of polishing the mirror of the soul. When we surrender to this fluidity, we rediscover the child’s wisdom and the Holy Fool’s playfulness. And now more than ever, the world is in dire need of both.
Prayer for Play
God, let us see Your light each day
and this day let us not be burdened by purpose.
Let us not do only what is necessary and serious.
Play with us, God, and let us play with You—
as the wind plays upon the water with light,
as wonder and curiosity dance
upon the face of a child.
Let us see Your light even in the smallest puddle by the road.—Dorothee Sölle (*6)
References
(*1) Matthew 18:3
(*2) Rabindranath Tagore, via Martina Rambusch-Nowak
(*3) Samadhi Part 3 – The Pathless Path, Daniel J. Schmidt & Tanja Mahar
(*4) Tao Te Ching, Chapter 26
(*5) David Gilmore, The Roots of the Fool
(*6) Dorothee Sölle, Praising Without Lying
