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Last weekend it was beyond fun and a pleasure to meet Sue and Mitsu who are lovely and generous. One thing that happened was that we walked by a new park that had been built near Union Square, and there was this wonderful play dome. It wasn't complicated... just a smooth dome, like a modern hill that even small kids could climb up and slide down.

This reminded me of a park where I myself played as a child and where I used to take the kids when they were smaller. In this wonderful park is a rather famous and sometimes controversial statue (no those aren't my children), which causes people to refer to the park as "Naked Lady Park."    

She just seems so serene to me... children coming and going and she witholds nothing, basking in the sunshine. :) 

Snippet from the Song of Enlightenment:

When you truly awaken,
You have no formal merit.
In the multiplicity of the relative world,
You cannot find such freedom.
Self-centered merit brings the joy of heaven itself,
But it is like shooting an arrow at the sky;
When the force is exhausted, it falls to the earth,
And then everything goes wrong.

Why should this be better
Than the true way of the absolute,
Directly penetrating the ground of Tathagata?
Just take hold of the source
And never mind the branches.
It is like a treasure-moon
Enclosed in a beautiful emerald.
Now I understand this Mani-jewel
And my gain is the gain of everyone endlessly

http://members.optushome.com.au/davidquinn000/Buddhist%20Writings/Song.htm

More along the lines of what I was asking for in terms of instances of Basic Goodness in play are tiny little things like knowing that one of my kids needs to spend time with me in an important way so I put aside *everything* else... or saying YES to projects and events and time spending that I mentally talked myself out of. These things happen in small ways all of the time... like an inner leap from which seems to spring a larger responsiveness from life experience.

Today's little story is of talking with two of my children about aliens on the drive back from school. My son has made the determination never to say 'if' where aliens are concerned, because he says it makes no sense to him that out of an infinite universe we are the only life. Leaving aside his scientific accuracy, the point is that my younger daughter then chimes in, giggles, and riffs on the conversation in various ways until we are completely amused with ourselves.

We come home, get to our individual projects, and then I just feel an inner nudge to just stop. "That's it, I'm watching TV."

Well, they've programmed the TiVo in such a way that everything I would normally watch hasn't been saved, so I resort to flipping channels where I find Close Encounters! Now, I have *never* seen this. I've seen just clips of it. We didn't catch the beginning, but that after having such a ball together with the alien topic we ended up giggling and watching this film, well it was like a little wink. 

This may seem like no big deal, and indeed, it isn't. In some way however, knowing this underlying instinct... a kind of spark of insight, and removing contrivances of my own with a sense of trust in that, is. Even the tiniest details...