Humor

The ancient Greeks had a saying that the gods laugh, the meaning being that people suffer because they’re in the midst of their suffering, they don’t see anything funny about it. But the gods are separated, they’re off in a distance, and from their perspective a lot of human suffering is actually kind of funny.

Now, that sounds a little harsh and cruel, but it does make an important point: A large part of humor is gaining distance, which is why humor is such an important part of the practice when you use it right, when you can step back from your defilements and see that they’re ridiculous. It’s an important step in getting past their power.

The forest ajaans, by and large, all had a very good sense of humor in this way.

Ajaan Lee liked to make comparisons. Say you walk to the sala to meditate, but then you sit here, and your mind is thinking about thoughts of lust or thoughts of anger. He says you’re like a bat. When it sleeps, its feet are higher than its head. In other words, your feet knew enough to bring you to the sala to meditate, but here’s your head, thinking thoughts of lust, thoughts of anger. You’re no different from a bat.

If you’re sitting here thinking about the bad points of other people, you have to ask yourself, “Did you ask their permission to think about their bad points?” If not, you’ve taken their things without permission. It’s as if you’re breaking the precept against stealing.

So by stepping back, you’re also able to make comparisons. Seeing parallels between your particular defilements and something that’s obviously ridiculous helps get you past those defilements.

This is the principle you see in a lot of the origin stories in the Vinaya, like the one against drinking. The story goes that Ven. Sāgata had lots of psychic powers. When he does battle with a fire-breathing serpent and wins, the word gets out. The laypeople want to make merit with him because, obviously, he’s a great meditator.

So they ask the monks, “What is it that monks don’t usually get?” Well, they ask the wrong monks: the group of six, the instigators of a lot of trouble in the Vinaya. The group of six say, “Monks very rarely get hard liquor.” So the next day everybody has prepared a little glass of hard liquor for Sāgata. He goes from house to house to house, taking a little drink here, a little drink there. By the time he gets to the city gate, he passes out.

The Buddha comes along with some monks. They see him, so the Buddha tells the monks to pick him up and take him back to the monastery. They get back and lay Sāgata down on the ground with his head toward the Buddha. But he doesn’t know where he is, so he tosses and turns, tosses and turns. Finally, he’s got his feet pointed at the Buddha, which you don’t do.

The Buddha asks the monks, “In the past, didn’t Sāgata show us deference and reverence?” “Yes.” “Is he showing reverence now?” “No.” “In the past, didn’t he do battle with a fire-breathing serpent?” “Yes.” “Could he do battle with a salamander now?” “Well, no.”

That salamander sticks in your mind.

But the point of the story is that he was not paying respect to the Buddha. When you’re drinking, you don’t know you’re in the same world with the Buddha at all, even though in his case he was right there in the Buddha’s presence. When you drink, it’s as if you’ve blotted the Buddha out of your world.

It reminds me of a story about one of Ajaan Fuang’s students who was a salesman for a tile company. He had lots of clients, lots of people he had to meet with. One evening he was visiting with Ajaan Fuang while Ajaan Fuang’s students were sitting there meditating. He explained to Ajaan Fuang that he had to be exempted from the precept against drinking, because in his social life, in his business life, there was a lot of group pressure to drink.

Ajaan Fuang pointed to the people sitting meditating around him and said, “What about this group? Why aren’t you giving in to their group pressure? They’re not drinking.”

That kind of humor is the kind of humor you want. It makes you stop and think. You step back from your defilements. You see how they’re parallel to something that’s pretty ridiculous. That releases you from a lot of their power.

The important thing, though, is that you have a proper sense of humor, because there can be some pretty vicious and nasty ways of making jokes, pretty silly ways of making jokes, which are not helpful in the practice. So when you look at your sense of humor in general, remember, when you speak in humorous ways, that it still has to fall in line with the principles of right speech.

Just because something is funny doesn’t mean it’s exempt. Which means that you don’t tell the sort of jokes that are basically lies misrepresenting the truth. You don’t tell the sorts of jokes that are divisive speech—in other words, racist, sexist, looking down on certain nationalities. You don’t employ the humor that comes from using foul language. You avoid the kind of humor that’s just silly. Most puns would fall into that category.

So, what does that leave you? Well, it leaves you with genuine humor, the humor that points out the truth of things that people tend to miss because they’re too involved in something. They haven’t been able to step back and look at the situation.

That’s why the great humorists of the past were really great. They told the truth in a way that was not divisive, that didn’t use foul language, and wasn’t silly. When you can develop that kind of humor and bring it to your own practice, you begin to see parallels between your defilements and something that’s obviously ridiculous. It makes the defilement itself seem ridiculous, which is the whole point of learning to laugh in a good-natured way at your stupidity for having allowed yourself to behave in those ways.

So, step back, look for parallels, learn how to disidentify with your greed, disidentify with your aversion, disidentify with your delusion, in all their various ramifications, all their various forms. When you can do that, you’ve taken a great step toward progress in your practice.