What's so funny about religion?

Budai
Photo by Challiyan

Laughter is heralded today as being beneficial for everything from food cravings to pain thresholds.  It is said to reduce the levels of stress hormones such as adrenaline, and to increase the levels of soothing hormones such as endorphins.  It provides physical and emotional release - and even exercises the abs, diaphragm, shoulders and heart.

Yeah, but...  Can it pray?

Zen Master Osho absolutely vouches that it can.  He describes it in this mystical fashion: "In a real deep laughter the mind disappears.  It is not a part of mind or of the heart.  When a real laughter happens - a belly laughter, as it is called - then it comes from your very core..."

Osho directly links laughter with meditation, a form of prayer that spans many religious traditions.  He explains, "I am introducing laughter as a meditation because nothing makes you so total as laughter; nothing makes you stop your thinking as laughter does."  He goes so far as to say that "laughter is the very essence of religion," yet makes a clear distinction between types of laughter.  Whereas secular laughter is directed at or about others, "the religious man laughs at himself, or at the whole ridiculousness of man's being."

We are gifted with the Laughing Buddha's example - just so we don't forget that the joke is on us if we take ourselves too seriously.

Resources

https://www.messagefrommasters.com/Spiritual_Quotes/Osho/osho_laughter_quotes1.htm

https://www.beinghappybuddha.com/blogs/insights/who-was-laughing-buddha