Moshe: So the other question: What caused you to seek out a clown teacher and to bring clowning into your world
Bernie: Well, it’s been part of my world in some kind of natural way for a long time, but when I was sort of phasing out of being in charge of different kinds of organizations and Zen centers and things of that nature and installed a lot of people into running these things; one of the things that kept grabbing me is how people felt, how they were taking themselves too seriously. So I was really looking more at the trickster role, coyote role than the clown role. When I thought of clowning, that was more to getting some technical skills to be able to do the other work in a better way. But I really felt it very important that one phase of our work has to be to make sure that people don’t take themselves too seriously or see the gates or the armor that they are building in doing their job and how to make it more inclusive. I thought that a fun way of doing it or a good way of doing it is to sort of visit them in the role of the clown or the jester and poke fun at ways that I felt they were blocking the world from entering their spheres.
http://yoowho.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/ ... n-and-zen/