You find yourself thinking, "Why would he ask the question if it were the normal, everyday answer?" "There has to be a trick. It has to be funny. AND it has to have something to do with chickens and roads..."
When you reach the punchline you might chuckle, snort or guffaw at your massive overthinking of a simple question. You may or may NOT be so humble as to enjoy a dig at your habitual humanity. But if you are of, (supposedly), Eastern thinking; if you are truly enlightened, you'd probably laugh your ass off when the six-year-old aspiring comic says, "To get to the other side," and proceeds to laugh his OWN ass off. In fact, (and this may be one acid test of enlightenment), you'd laugh just as hard even if you'd already heard the joke. Indeed the man who has trained himself to recognize spontaneous, intuitive insights may even laugh louder and longer in direct proportion to how many times he's heard the joke. Pray with me now, dear reader, "May my comedic spirit someday revert to its original 'I know you are but what am I?'"
If you'd said to Picasso, "That looks like something my five-year-old daughter drew," you'd have said it in either ignorant disapproval or wise approbation. Either way Picasso would have been over the moon with your critique. But if he had to explain to you that it was the fledgeling spirit he was attempting to capture on the canvas after you had made your comment, you might have thought he was full of shit. If he had explained this BEFORE your evaluation of his painting it would have rendered the praise worthless to him.
In the same way, if you have to explain a joke to someone before they laugh you KNOW the laughter is unacceptable trade for your comedic craftsmanship. A Taoist test in one question: "Can you educate your soul so that it... make(s) your strength unitary and achieve(s) that softness that makes you like a little child?"
There are those who believe that our original state before, (and optimistically after), our lives on earth is an intuitive, direct experience of reality. While experiencing life we are trained to think and behave outside that realm until it is ultimately suppressed or forgotten. Being closer to that original state, and having not yet "put away their childish ways", children can still laugh at stupid jokes and watch their favourite movies twice a day for 6 months if their parents let them. This is why they are so full of joy. Laughter is not taught. When you throw a baby in the air her chipmunk chuckles may just be about the nicest sound in the world. She's not immitating anything she has heard, learned and practiced, she is releasing her intuitive joy and sharing it with all those within earshot. Try really hard next time you do this; I dare you; try not to laugh or at least smile. If you can do this, quit your job, sell your possessions and get thee to a nunnery/monestary!
If you peeked inside the living room window of an enlightened man who allows himself enough attachment to existence to buy and own a TV and some DVD's, (and for that matter a living room), fearless of spatial limitations such as ownership, envy, and jealousy those possessions may lead to... Okay for convenience's sake let's say it's a run down shack in a crappy neighbourhood full of crackheads, pimps and thieves. And let's also say it's a black and white, thick screen TV with no remote. And let's pretend the movies are not on DVD's but VHS cassettes. WHEW! Okay, what movie do you suppose it would be? I think the peeper might be surprised.
The Confucian "Superior Man" might be watching something very funny, yet principled, morally stuctured and maybe even instructional. Bill Cosby - "Himself", "Amelie" or any of a handful of laugh-packed Disney films. A Buddhist or Hindu from the Madhyamika and Vedanta schools might go as far as "When Harry Met Sally", the Simpsons or George Carlin "It's Bad For Ya". The Zen Buddhist or the Lao Tsu's Taoist "Man of Calling" would be watching "Fletch", "Happy Gilmore", "Southpark" or the 3 Stooges. Maybe if they all got together they could watch the PG13 version of "The Big Lebowsky". This is what I reckon anyways.
In "The Odyssey" there's a part where a priest and a poet fall on their knees before Odysseus and beg him to spare their lives. He kills the priest without a thought and lets the poet live. If there had been a priest, poet, and a jester, Odysseus would have taken the jester to a tavern with all of his men and gotten drunk. There their laughter would have made the mead taste of ambrosia.
We can't study laughter, or be trained to increase our senses of humour. However, there's nothing better than training and educational formalism to dull a wit and smother a person's innate gift of laughter. How deep is the depression that cannot be soothed by it? How complete is the dimentia that can eliminate it? How fierce is the greed that can transplant it? The anger that can usurp it? The lust that can consume it? And how mislead is the intellect that can explain it away? Laughter is the best medicine, right?
There is said to be a thin line between comic and cosmic, (and only one letter), because it can be the psychic doorway to a spiritual rebirth. It is the part of human nature that is potentially the most transcendent. Tom Robbins says that a divine playfullness intended to lighten a man's existential burden has been lost on all the working stiffs and intellectuals alike. He writes of Buddhist Abbott Chogyam Trungpa squirting his disciples with water pistols when they became overly earnest in their meditation and Japan's most venerated ninja having a house full of Mickey Mouse memorabilia.
The message is not to lighten up, it's that we desperately NEED to lighten up. When I die and my heart is put on one side of a scale and a feather on the other I want the scale to balance.
I'm gonna go watch a season of the Simpsons. Or maybe the 40 Year Old Virgin. Or Airplane! Or Anchorman. And I'm gonna laugh so hard I'll have abs again! Because it's GOOD for me!
Laugh your ass off today, dear reader. And if you can, make someone else do it too.
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