'Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.' 'There is something in the nature of all play that is not serious but at the same time may be sincere.' - Alan Wilson Watts - --- Hello, my name is Bazooka, and I am a humorholic. Now, this bashful confession should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody who has ever read a single paragraph penned by yours truly; all y'all probably know by now that I love to garnish my posts with tongue-in-cheek double entendre, irony & wordplay and can barely bring myself to write one damn sentence without turning it into some kind of wisecrack. I have alway had a great disdain for all things which are utterly devoid of humor; and as far as my communication style goes, it is nigh impossible for me to say or write anything that is one hundred percent irony-free without being overcome by a profound feeling of awkwardness. Now you might think "cool story bro... but what on earth has this got to do with the price of 5 Meo?" Well, here is the thing: I feel that humor is a deeply ambiguous phenomenon. On one hand, it seems that humor is closely related to truth; it can propel us to free ourselves from an all too myopic and insular point of view (aka the ego's perspective) and instead look at reality from a sort of detached & panoramic bird's eye view. It also has the power to take the existential gravity out of life and transform into a kind of jaunty dance, a kind of free-flowing waltz full of lightness, joy and divinity. In this sense, one might almost feel justified to claim that humor is the true 'language of god' - or at least the one type among all of the forms of human expression that comes closest to a god-like way of relating to existence. I really do feel that humor, in very much the same way as truth, can set you free; can being the crucial word here. I also believe that probably the number one cause of human suffering on this planet stems from people taking themselves WAY to goddamn seriously - an unfortunate fact which to counteract has in a way, consciously or unconsciously, always been my number one holy mission in life, lol. On the other hand, however, it is pretty evident that humor can also be (mis)used as a defense mechanism, as a tool to keep reality at bay, so to speak. God knows I have been guilty of this shameful misappropriation throughout my life... especially during my teenage years, humor used to be my big fat protective shield against life's cruelty; sarcasm and irony being my trusted lance and sword. And as much as I still love to wield all of these weapons in order to spice things up from time to time, I cannot deny that the majority of people that I meet who frequently use irony and sarcasm in their speech somehow seem like 'broken' people to me... or at least there always seems to be something slightly off about them. So there definitely is a dark side to humor that should not be overlooked; like every powerful tool, it needs to be used in the right way lest it turn into yet another tool for (self)destruction. Having said all of this, I still stand by my claim that humor is one of the most precious gifts that a god could ever bestow upon his creatures. So it always seemed kind of odd to me that in spiritual circles, there usually isn't a lot of emphasis on humor at all! I think that one of the things that scares people off when they come in contact with spiritual seekers and teachers is the fact that most of them seem to have handed in their sense of humor at the Ashram's cloakroom and just left it there (or traded them for a pair of Jesus sandals, which would suggest that at least they got something in return). - However, there are of course notable exceptions. There is quite a bit of humor to be found in Zen teachings, even though it is a highly, um, shall we say, idiosyncratic style of humor that leaves most folks scratching their heads in total bewilderment (which is sort of the point) instead of slapping their knees and laughing their butts off. (Not all humor has to be of the gross laugh-out-loud variety; some of my favorite forms of humor are more like a subtle nudge and a wink, slyly hidden between the lines and as dry as a stiff Martini.) And then of course, one of the most prominent spiritual teachers who recognized the divine quality of humor and laughter was Alan Watts, who I adore exactly for this reason! I absolutely love his view of life as a sort of game that God has created in order to entertain itself, and I especially like the emphasis he put on the fine but very crucial distinction between the 'serious' and the 'sincere' way of playing the game; a distinction which I feel is all too often overlooked by spiritual seekers who, in their search for Truth, tend to develop a kind of self-important 'holier than thou' attitude and turn the search into a puritanical pilgrimage instead of choosing to pull the sticks out of their behinds and bask in the hilarious, glorious, joyful absurdity of it all. After all, life is nothing but an incredibly elaborate joke... and you are both the narrator and the butt of it! Sooooo, in the words of yet another prominent truth seeker...