The King & the Jester
We built Bodisutra around the idea of the medieval king and his court jester; the elegant and the humorous. Humour gives us spiritual distance and supports healing when employed wisely.
Bodi is the jester in our court. And the rash impetuous arrogant foolish scoffing king also. He laughs at himself, at his wife and mankind.
Norman is the wise mentor who sees the light in all. He represents the healed mind, the happy king or queen in the heart of all. To get to the wise king inside you, you need to remember to laugh at your folly, and the folly of the world. Life is far too important to take seriously. The dance between those two characters is the dance of all of us.
Norman, or Norm, is modeled on the sage we all seek within us. Finding that inner sage is the purpose of a rich inner life, which is the symbolic meaning of the Holy Grail legend: to pull a life of service out of us. And that life of service is in service to the inner king. This is the grail quest.
When Nathan was developing Bodisutra he found himself one morning on the island of Oahu and the line came to him as woke: “King informs duty.” That inner voice was speaking of the inner king. Not an outer king. Prince Hal said at the end of Shakespeare's King Henry IV Part 2:
“Presume not that I am the thing I was.
For God doth know and so shall the world perceive,
that I’ve turned away my former self.”
"That’s everybody’s purpose: To turn away our former self and to become king. Not on an earthly throne. You become king of your mind; you become king of your Self. So when workbook in the Course in Miracles tells us, “My Self is ruler of the universe,” what it is saying is: I am in control. The kingdom is the kingdom of my mind and I am in control of that. And then there are some people who, when they do this, and they do this at a very advanced state, then what they leave the world is a great gift. As much as any great artist or great thinker and certainly the Course in Miracles itself. Then, what they leave behind is a reminder of who we really are.Sometimes what’s left behind is a means, a process, whereby we could remember who we are, such as what you find in the Course in Miracles and in Beethoven's body of work.""
Kenneth Wapnick
The duty of man is to listen to the dictates of the inner king to become that wise king.
It is called Bodisutra, as opposed to Normsutra, because the student asks the questions and makes the errors and we learn alongside Bodi in this story. Norman rises to the challenge of the student. When the student is ready the teacher arrives. Norman is like any loving voice of wisdom, he wants to be free of the role. He wants the student to become fully acquainted with his inner teacher. Unfortunately, Bodi is a total fool (as we all can be when we don't listen to the healed mind) often, so that is a slow process.
The jester was the only character who could laugh at the king. Sometimes the king is right and sometimes he is wrong. But who dares tell him this to his face? Who can hold up the mirror to your absurdity? That's the job of the jester. That's the power of the trickster to show the madness of ego. In this way, by laughing at our folly...wisdom concentrates, the real inner king emerges and healing happens.
"The mighty hero of extraordinary powers able to lift Mount Govardhan on a finger, and to fill himself with the terrible glory of the universe, is each of us; not the physical self visible in the mirror, but the King within."
Joseph Campbell
Oscar Wilde once said:
"Life is far too important to take seriously."
And we do take it very seriously.
Which is often wise. But when we lose sight of joy, happiness and gentleness we need the jester to handle our madness: Cue Bodi and the gang at Bodisutra.
This tradition of holding up the mirror to madness with humor is known as 'crazy wisdom.' The power of a character animation like Bodisutra lies in the fact that gurus and therapists are fallible. There are plenty of people in those professions who are primitive and superficial.
Yet we still seek wisdom.
It is the most natural thing in the world. But how to find wisdom when there is so much corruption and shallowness in the world?
A healthy cynicism must be married with an open mind. Bodisutra, as a story, is a marriage of such qualities.