Moment of Laughter: Is life a cosmic joke?

(Photo by Wm Jas)

Perhaps the biggest “cosmic joke” of all is people’s inability to define this phrase.

When Yahoo! Answers put forth the question “What is a cosmic joke?” – readers couldn’t seem to fully agree.  One quoted theJoker, Batman’s enemy, as claiming that he’s “the Cosmic joke.”  This reader went on to explain that this is “kind of like saying he’s the ultimate joke, or the height of all jokes, or made of the essence of joking itself, or the joke that is so deep it’s beyond the understanding of all but himself.”  This same reader astutely observed that “people apply ‘cosmic’ to all sorts of things to make them sound deep or mysterious or elemental…”

However, there must be something to this “cosmic joke” stuff, or the Buddha wouldn’t be laughing so much of the time.  Budai (as he is called in Chinese, akin to Hotei in Japanese and Bo Dai in Vietnamese) is usually depicted as “a fat bald man wearing a robe.”  He also wears prayer beads and carries his few worldly

possessions in a sack.  Although this may not seem like such a jolly good lifestyle, Wikipedia describes

Budai as “poor but content.”

Ever wonder why there are so many Jewish comedians?  Rabbi Noah Weinberg at Aish.com thinks maybe its because “laughter is a deeply spiritual emotion.”  He explains that jokes not only have “the power to grab

our attention and focus our mind,” but also “can snap us out of melancholy, put things back into perspective, and provide the momentum to make the best of life.”  That’s a mighty tall order for a bunch of giggles, guffaws, cackles, snickers and snorts.

Izzy Gesell, founder of April 14’s International Moment of Laughter Day, offers these suggestions for making Moment Day mountainously momentous:  show your baby pictures to someone who’s never seen

them; laugh out loud at the funny cards in a greeting card shop; laugh at your naked image in the mirror; and (if you’ve survived that last one) laugh for no apparent reason at all (go ahead, you’ve earned it). 

  

Resources

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090222040002AAB9qGi

http://www.aish.com/sp/48w/48957381.html

http://www.wibw.com/blogs/mytv/90828499.html

http://www.izzyg.com/content/International_Moment_of_Laughter_April_14th/1002

Copyright April 13, 2012 by Linda Van Slyke