Science confirms that laughter is good medicine, so here is a major dose of innovative animation. The Buddha was perhaps the only major religious figure frequently depicted as happy, jovial, and laughing -- and for good reason. Enough with the stiffness of austerity and onto the joy here and hereafter.
(LA Times) In celebration of the show’s 10th anniversary, the funny side of the FOX network is spotlighting the Griffin household -- Stewie, Brian, Peter (Seth MacFarlane), Lois, Chris, and Meg (Mila Kunis) -- with a 10-city, one-night-only, exclusive midnight viewing of an exclusive episode as well never-before-seen footage, trivia, and giveaways.
Also in: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Seattle
Tickets for the Southern California event are free on a first-come, first-served basis and can be reserved at familyguyLA@gmail.com.
The new episode that will be screened is called “Lottery Fever,” which finds the Rhode Island family struggling to stay grounded after finding themselves holding a winning ticket. The especially subversive 2009 episode “Road to Multiverse” will also be screening, having been picked for the occasion by fans voting via Facebook. The screenings will also include a 22-minute bonus feature from the forthcoming “Family Guy” DVD, due on shelves on Dec.13, 2011.
Scientists Hint at Why Laughter Feels So Good Text by James Gorman (New York Times, Sept. 13, 2011)
Laughter is regularly promoted as a source of health and well being, but it has been hard to pin down exactly why laughing until it hurts feels so good. The answer, reports Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist at Oxford, is not the intellectual pleasure of cerebral humor, but the physical act of laughing.... ha, ha, ha... endorphins... “Laughter is very weird stuff, actually”... laughter contributes to group bonding and may have been important in the evolution of highly social humans. Social laughter, Dr. Dunbar suggests, relaxed and contagious, is “grooming at a distance,” an activity that fosters closeness in a group the way one-on-one grooming, patting and delousing promote and maintain bonds between individual primates of all sorts. More
A good sense of humor is the root of all sanity. Instant relief is attainable with mindfulness (nonjudgmental awareness) of the present moment, as described in the "Four Foundations of Mindfulness Discourse" (MN 10). But long term serenity depends on levity. Wit, wisdom, and whimsy are available to everyone online and on the radio in progressive/enlightened markets. Here are a handful we enjoy:
Monty Python introduces the theoretical consequences if such a joke were ever found before science reveals the answer. "Laughter is the best medicine," of course. And those benefits obtain even if the laughter, at first, is forced. This explains the growing popularity of Laughter Yoga. Prof. Richard Wiseman explains the submission and voting process that collected 40,000 jokes. Buddhism is wonderful because it keeps its sense of humor in the face of all.
Prof. Wiseman explains comedy to comedian Lewis Black (History Channel)
Humor is vital to living, now more so than ever. Buddhism has a sense of humor (i.e., AjahnBrahm, "the Buddhist Seinfeld," a noble British Theravada monk and author who trained in the jungles of Thailand and is now the abbot of a large monastery and separate nunnery in Australia). American Buddhists in particular, many of them with Jewish roots (e.g., Nes Wisker), are funny. And Buddhist monks are often themost lighthearted of all (in our experience).
So it's odd that the Dalai Lama had never heard the most popular of a handful of ubiquitous "Buddhist jokes." One could travel in Buddhist circles or converse during post-meditation social hours and not have heard them.
But if he of all people hasn't, maybe readers haven't either. So here are some, starting with the one that went over the Dalai Lama's head. It happened on live TV when it was told to him with the assistance of interpreters by an Australian interviewer.
It took him a while, but I bet he finally got it (newsbiscuit.com)
The Dalai Lama walks into a pizza parlor, looks over the menu, and announces, "Make me One with everything!"
A lot is lost in translation. But how could it be that neither he nor his Buddhist interpreters -- who are fluent in both English and Tibetan -- had never heard it? It's got his name right in it.
"Did you hear about the Dharma-Vac?"
"No, what's that?"
"The Buddhist vacuum cleaner. Millions were spent on its development, millions more on advertising it, yet there are about a million sitting unsold in a warehouse."
"Why, what was the problem?"
"Well, it turns out no one is interested in a vacuum cleaner with no attachments."
There are many variations in the telling, but the punch line is inexorable.
Park spots in front of Potala Palace, Lhasa, capital of Tibet
Hundreds of monastics were called Potala Palace in Tibet's capital for a worldwide council of Buddhists. The Southern Buddhists came up from the subcontinent, the Northern Buddhists came down from China, and Mountain Buddhists came from all around the Himalayas -- all in fancy chauffeured cars.
But where to park?
The Hina-yana ["Smaller Vehicle"] got their first, but there were more Maha-yana ["Great Vehicle"], and after all the Vajra-yana ["Thunderbolt Vehicle"] drove the fastest.
They were all honking and arguing for the best spots, disturbing the Dalai Lama who was waiting inside for them to convene the council.
They continued to honk, they continued to argue.
Finally the Dalai Lama came out and called them to order, pointing at the red and white signs closest to the palace and shouting: "Hinayana, Mahayana, Vajrayana -- ALL vehicles will be towed!"
It doesn't matter what "vehicle" or means we choose (or mix and match), the camps and categories that divide us all fall away. We all agree there is enlightenment, and this is not it. That enlightenment is not far very away. Either we need to practice or simply realize our interconnectedness in an instant so that this samsara will be our nirvana. We all agree meditation practice of some sort or another (breathing, recollecting, studying-and-reflecting, chanting, surrendering and accepting the moment, or hearing a sutra as the eye of wisdom arises) is decisive.
A Buddhist monk, unfamiliar with American fast food habits, is surprised to see a hot dog cart in mid city Manhattan.
"What's that?"
"That's a hot dog stand, venerable sir," his friend answers.
They approach, and the monk in his loftiest voice with Zen-like confidence, "Make me one with everything!"
The hot dog maker looks him up and down, hands him the [vegetarian tofu] hot dog piled high, and announces, "That'll be five bucks."
The monk hands him a twenty dollar bill and waits.
The man goes about his business.
And after a long time, the monk says, "Hey, what about my change?"
The vendor looks him up and down again, "You should know better than anyone, change comes from within."
The monk experiences satori.
More Jokes (variations on same themes)
Laughing Buddha at An Giang Pagoda, Vietnam (Tö/Denis De Mesmaeker/Flickr.com)
Why can't the Dalai Lama vacuum under the sofa?
Because he has no attachments. (Riotgrrl69)
What did the Dalai Lama say to the hot dog vendor?
Make me one with everything. (Jtron)
The hot dog vendor said, "That will be $2.50." The Dalai Lama handed him a five and waited. Then the Dalai Lama said, "Hey where's my change?" The hot dog vendor answered, "Change must come from within!" (Jessamyn)
I hear the Dalai Lama recently fired his gardener, who had a degree in carnations but didn't dig reincarnations. (Weapons-grade pandemonium)
The vendor said, "Change must come from within."
The Dalai Lama admitted this was true, ate his hot dog, which gave him terrible breath and bothered his sore tooth.
So he walked on over to the dentist's office.
Although old and frail he often walked barefoot, as evidenced by the thickness of the soles of his feet.
It is for this reason that he is sometimes known as the "super-calloused fragile mystic exhibiting halitosis."
The dentist inspected the tooth and said he could fill the cavity right away. But when he offered him Novacaine, the Dalai Lama declined, explaining that it was his practice to "transcend dental medication." (Wet Spot)
I can't help remembering the "Family Guy" episode where Peter sees a "Free Tibet" button, rushes to a pay phone, and says, "Hello, China? Yes, ALL the tea." (Spaceman_spiff)
Hellooooo Dalai! (Mattbucher)
The hot dog vendor asks the Buddhist, "You want mustard, onion, chili, ketchup, or pickles with that dog?
"Make me one with everything" he replies. (Essexjan)
If the Dalai Lama were a redneck, he'd believe in reintarnation. (Mr. Gunn)
I once knew someone who was so dumb he thought a "dalai lama" was a Peruvian stuffed animal. (Pyramid termite)
"So I jump ship in Hong Kong and make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas. A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald... striking. So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one -- big hitter, the Lama -- long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga... gunga, gunga-galunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, 'Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know.' And he says, 'Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness.' So I got that goin' for me, which is nice." ("Caddyshack," Badgolfer.com)
Living in a topsy-turvy world is easy -- as long as our sense of humor remains intact. That's not always easy. To keep smiling, to start laughing, is a blessing.
It takes not only an open mind but a throbbing heart. The heart opens, the mind opens. The marriage of compassion and wisdom is no mismatched pairing.
There are are growing number of intelligent comedians thriving in the the Bush-catastrophe era we are still living in with Barack O'Bush, who has done so much to keep and promote not only the policies of the Cheney-Bush administration but also its key players.
Why argue about revolution when things are worse than ever with a much nicer face on it? How I wished we could have a black president. I never bargained for a (shsssssh) sad "sell out."
Buddhism has many comedians: Ajahn Brahm, Nes Wisker, Roshi Albrizze, Ashley Wells, and even the British Western-Thai-Theravada-tradition monk Ajahn Sumedho, who wrote a book titled Who We Really Are, which explains:
"Now one of the big problems in meditation is that we can take ourselves too seriously.
"We can see ourselves as religious people dedicated towards serious things, such as realizing truth.
"We feel important; we are not just frivolous or ordinary people, going about our lives, just going shopping in the supermarket and watching television.
"Of course this seriousness has advantages; it might encourage us to give up foolish activities for more serious ones.
"But the process can lead to arrogance and conceit: a sense of being someone who has special moral precepts or some altruistic goal, or of being exceptional in some way, having come onto the planet as some kind of messiah.
It's a kind of pride that can make human beings lose all perspective; so we need humor to point to the absurdity of our self-obsession."
James: I laugh a lot when I meditate, especially when that sneaky ego creeps in with the "spiritual materialism" of smugness, arrogance, and pride of feeling like I'm something special because I'm meditating, because I'm a "Buddhist," or because I'm feeling like I "get it." It is as if there is something to "get" (shaking head and chuckling). It's more like there is something to lose [to abandon, to let go of]. Namely, the very ego that wants to acquire. More
Laughter and Buddhism This May I will travel to France to present a paper on Laughter and Buddhism. The meeting is that of philosophers interested in comparative work between Western and Eastern philosophies. The topic this time is "Laughter: East and West."
Science confirms that laughter is good medicine, so here is a major dose of innovative animation. The Buddha was perhaps the only major religious figure frequently depicted as happy, jovial, and laughing -- and for good reason. Enough with the stiffness of austerity and onto the joy here and hereafter.
(LA Times) In celebration of the show’s 10th anniversary, the funny side of the FOX network is spotlighting the Griffin household -- Stewie, Brian, Peter (Seth MacFarlane), Lois, Chris, and Meg (Mila Kunis) -- with a 10-city, one-night-only, exclusive midnight viewing of an exclusive episode as well never-before-seen footage, trivia, and giveaways.
The new episode that will be screened is called “Lottery Fever,” which finds the Rhode Island family struggling to stay grounded after finding themselves holding a winning ticket. The especially subversive 2009 episode “Road to Multiverse” will also be screening, having been picked for the occasion by fans voting via Facebook. The screenings will also include a 22-minute bonus feature from the forthcoming “Family Guy” DVD, due on shelves on Dec.13, 2011.
Park spots in front of Potala Palace, Lhasa, capital of Tibet
