The Buddha smiled. Is it bad to laugh?

The Buddha of Kapilavastu, Gandhara (now Bamiyan, Mes Aynak, Kabul, Afghanistan)

Shiva gains samadhi and is done.

At a Buddhist temple, I was told it was wrong to laugh. But this is a meditation center, I countered. "All the more reason -- you'll distract others who are trying to concentrate. And they'll think you're crazy."

Them thinking I'm crazy does not make it wrong nor worry me in the least. But disturbing others, all right, that's true. "How about smile and quietly giggle? It can only help."

"Why would that help?"

"Because enlighten up. This [meditating] is about letting go. It's not about struggling, muscling, and over-exerting. It was exactly because of those things that Siddhartha could NOT for years become the Buddha."

• 

  The Buddha (Victoria & Albert)

  In the allegory that is the Buddha's life story, Prince Siddhartha renounces the throne and palace, leaves home, leaves the country (ancient Gandhara/Indo-Scythia/Saka and the seasonal capital of Kapilavastu), and heads East to proto-India to find a guru/yogi. He learns under him, masters what that meditator is teaching, and becomes disappointed with the summum bonum, goes to another, same thing happens, then sets off on his own to practice more severe austerities for penance and purification as so many have done down the ages, all of which fails. He only succeeds in calm-and-insight -- in real awakening -- when he stops being afraid of the blissful meditative absorptions (jhanas, samma-samādhi, right stillness), which lead to purification. But he doesn't stop there. That's only the foundation. With that calm, he practices insight (systematic mindfulness on four subjects, four foundations, four topics: body, feelings, mind, and mind-objects). That leads to the realization of Dependent Origination, remembering past lives, and then the great awakening.

Ven. Vimalaramsi (formerly Mr. Marvel Logan), an almost universally decried American monk in Missouri (except that Armstrong), was right about one thing:

In meditation, when the mind wanders and we bring it back, it is essential to smile and release (then re-smile before beginning again), simply watching without resentment or built-up tension.

If a tennis player misses and grunts before serving again, it is crucial to smile and not overdo it. Overdoing it will lead to another mistake, whereas rebalancing and approaching the game with a sense of perspective and calm leads to a flow state. Stressing, worrying, needing, clinging -- these are no way to meditate (and will not even work in a sporty game of tennis).

Tension builds up around forehead and the temples when one struggles too much and strains. Smiling releases that tension so one can regain one's composure.

At the Forest Refuge Retreat Center outside of Boston (in Barre, Massachusetts), when the great Enlightened Master was leading a long retreat, he would give a Dhamma talk most nights.

He would often cause us to laugh. And sitting on a mat in the front row to see only him, or on a chair in the back to see everyone and him in context, it became obvious to me that he was getting addicted to being funny.

It's as if there were a pleasurable spurt of dopamine in his brain when he could make everyone in the room crack up.

The only problem was, he only had one go-to joke. And it wasn't funny. But cutting through the tension, it never failed to evoke some kind of comedic reaction -- except when he used it too soon after a major spike in laughter.

The joke, the quip really, went something like: "You come to Asia and find out."

• Retreatant: "What is the meaning of life?"
• Sayadaw: "You come to Asia and find out."
• Audience: *LOUD LAUGHTER*
• Retreatant: "How can anyone possibly sit in meditation for eight hours in one day?"
• Sayadaw: "You come to Asia and find out."
• Retreatant: "When you say that people see atomic particles (kalapas) with their third eye (mind) or perceive individual mind-moments (cittas) with their own conscious perception, you don't really believe that?"
• Sayadaw: "You come to Asia and find out."

Samatha, Jhana, and Vipassana

He has an international reputation for running a tight ship of strict morality and long hours of meditation --

• Ten Precepts for everyone (with monks living by 227 and 1,000 more minor rules of etiquette),
• and a schedule of 90-minute sitting meditation sessions,
• adding up to 8 or 12 hours of sitting a day, sometimes more,
• with every waking moment spent in mindful silence
• unless speaking to ask questions during a brief personal interview to report on progress or resolve a difficulty,
• or when unconsciously sleeping;
• we had no yoga nidra, so what the mind did when it drifted off to sleep was the mind's own business,
• but up to that moment of losing consciousness, it was all mindfulness all the time.

I have stayed at that forest meditation center more than once, deep in the jungles of Middle Burma (military coup and authoritarian Myanmar), and it is that way. Only, it's not enforced by force.

Laugh? Not on your life. Grimace

If anyone speaks and disturbs others or loses mindfulness, no one gets hit with a bamboo paddle like they might at a Mahayana Zendo. They might look. They might silently condemn or report the matter to him, but no one takes on by the scruff of the neck and walks them to detention, which is odd. One would expect that to happen if the Vinaya (Monastic Discipline) rules are so important, and they are.

In the world outside the precincts of the monastic grounds (within which there is a nunnery on one side and a monastery on the other side with more than 500 living and striving there), Myanmar's military police might do anything from lockup a dissident in Insein Prison, to manhandle a disorderly person, or shoot protesters with live rounds, which is odd because Asia is so nice, so reserved, so loathe to make a scene.

• The Dept. of Psychology at UC Berkeley offered a course on humor; I was terrified to take it, thinking that if it got deconstructed and intellectualized, I would no longer be able to laugh. That was probably right, but I yearned for insights as to why we as humans laugh. It is not all about "humor" itself. It's social. People laugh in groups, to appease, to feel bonded, and because a train of thought going one place is suddenly derailed. The transition is endured or enjoyed with laughter, as if we hit reset. Go to a comedy club. It's much funnier when full, regardless of who's performing. It should matter who's up on stage, but it hardly matters as long as others are laughing, and we get caught up in that group mind. I didn't take the class. I oftentimes still wish I had.

The West taught me to laugh. It's fun!

Misbehaving Western tourists are well tolerated, whereas anyone who grew up there just wouldn't think to act like an entitled Karen or Ken or even express emotion.

Songkran (Burmese New Year, like Holi celebrations in India, are the exception, when one might get splashed with water to peals of laughter or dusted with colorful powders to the delight of the crowds).

Of course, India in general can get quite unruly with its occasional communal violence and spirited love of cricket and Bollywood movies. I have never, in all my time in India, seen a dance break out on the street as it does in every other scene of every movie ever made by Bollywood.

But I did see men stand up and dance inside the orderly movie theater when a Bollywood film was playing, and a particularly catchy song came on. That was a shock as no one complained to the management to flog him into order with bamboo reeds or even looked over. It was public dancing. They won't kiss in public, and they never used to kiss on screen, but somebody might stand up and show appreciation of a pop song. Maybe, unlikely, but maybe.

This is no place for joking, no place to be silly, no place for pranks, or too much mirth. If ones cries out, "Oh the pleasure, oh the pleasure!" that might be alright. People will look into the matter, and if it's piti (rapture, joy, bliss), then it's an understandable exclamation. But anything else is frowned upon. Smile, smile all the time; those who frown, who are dour and grave are doing monasticism wrong. Doing it that way is a natural impulse, but success comes from relaxing, releasing, letting go and letting nature take its course.

Anyone who can laugh at life, who smiles often, is catching on. Sure, there's horror. Samsara, like Mara, can be very serious, nothing to scoff at. But don't sweat the small stuff.

This is Forest Tradition Buddhism following all the rules of the historical Buddha.

The Buddha always lived in bamboo groves, gardens, woods, forests, jungles, the wilderness, or high on a hilltop (e.g., at Eagles Peak, Rajagaha). Even when he came to a prosperous city, he would stay the night just outside in a monastic encampment in a sylvan place or sala (open air hall with a roof to protect from rain used by wandering ascetics and travelers).

Smiling is one thing, very good, but laughing?

So I asked, "Is it wrong to laugh?" It's not as if it's willful. It's spontaneous when something is funny, even if one has a quirky or dark sense of humor. I was told that the Buddha didn't go around laughing like a madman. Be that as it may, he smiled a lot. Of course, if one reads carefully, he always smiled for a reason. It was a prompt for his attendant to ask about it later.

And Ananda was dutiful in always asking when provoked it. To which the Buddha would answer with an insight, recognition, or memory of something that happened there, oftentimes something others did not see or recognize. It might have been a ghost undergoing karmic consequences or rich and privileged youths squandering their opportunity to progress in this lifetime.

He once saw a man and noted that

• if he had renounced the worldly life and taken up this spiritual practice at a young age, he would by now be fully enlightened,
• if he had taken up the practice a little later, he would be a non-returner (never having to return to this world and fully awakening in another better world),
• and if he takes up the practice in old age, he will become a stream-enterer,
• but if he reached old age and did not practice, he would again be reborn like dice being thrown in the air (Who knows how they will land?) without making any progress at all.

This was a shocking thing to point out as it illustrated that people are not born with fixed destinies. It matters what we do (our karma, our intentional deeds), no matter how good our fortune is to be born in one circumstance or another.

• The advice to Rahula MN 61 (suttacentral.net)

It was further pointed out to me, as has often happened, that the Buddha told his son, Ven. Rahula, who ordained as novice monk or samanera (little recluse, probationary wandering ascetic) at the age of 7, not to lie, not even for the sake of a joke or prank. Ven. Rahula was notorious for joking around. The Buddha smiled but saw danger in too much horsing around, too much distraction and diversion, too much joking and not taking things seriously, or lying and falsifying the truth to get a laugh.

• The "Enlightenment Tree" differs with different buddhas
• Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Ashley Wells (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly