Laughter

[Michael]

They say that when two wise men pass each other they laugh and move on.

My recollection of the genuinely spiritual people I have met is always of their smiling faces.

I would be interested to know how others here consider laughter and joy and silliness in religion/spirituality/philosophy?

[Trevor]

I had to think about this.
When I am laughing with my friends I feel alive and light-hearted. I don't have any worry about tomorrow, or if I have enough money. I feel connected with the people I'm with, and not afraid or envious of them. I am in the moment.
I had to think about the idea of laughter and spirituality because when I think of spiritual things, I think of it as being a "serious" subject. Isn't dying supposed to be serious? I feel the opposite of serious when I am laughing. Maybe it's only a tension reliever and increase in oxygen and bloodflow thing. Or maybe it's more than that. Just like letting go without actually dying?

[Michael]

I very much liked your description of laughter, it was very well observed.

It seems to me that many people take spirituality very seriously indeed, which, I suspect, is a sign of ego acivety rather than spirituality.

Fortunately others do not suffer in the same way. I once had the honour of meeting a Tibetan Rimpoche, he spent most of the time smiling or laughing and evidently took great delight in his spirituality. He certainly took things both seriously and lightheartedly. I found out later that he had half a page of doctorates and other qualifications. He had also suffered greatly.

I believe the balance between being serious and seeing the funy side of thigs is very important in our development. Yes, death is serious and should be taken seriously, but it also has its funny side, as do most things. I recall the moment when I lost the use of my legs as a child (I got it back since) that one part of me was extremely upset, while another part was laughing at the novelty and surprise of the situation. And I can still see the humour.

[vicente]

They say that when two wise men pass each other they laugh and move on.

My recollection of the genuinely spiritual people I have met is always of their smiling faces.

I would be interested to know how others here consider laughter and joy and silliness in religion/spirituality/philosophy?



That can be a deceptive observation,...do "genuinely spiritual people always have smiles?"

The answer is NO! Keep in mind what Wei Wu Wei said, "humility is just another level of pride."

For me, I've observed that truly genuine spiritual people are ALWAYS interested in your direct experience. Phoney gurus are interested in beliefs that step between you and your direct experience.

Remember, belief always steps between a person and their direct experience,...thus, you will NEVER find a genuine spiritual person advocating one of the Abrahamic religions. Their smiles do not arise from spirituality,...religion is a barrier to spirituality. Their smiles arise from delusion.

If you really want to observe a true Spiritual Person, read the story of Tilopa (and his interaction with Naropa). Tilopa was a Buddha,...often called the Second Transmission,...he was "Self-Lit", in that he had no Master,...although Long Pathers invented a lineage of so-called teachers afterwards to dissuade people from entering the Short Path.

JV Marco

[Michael]

Vicente, I never meant to say that genuinely spiritual people always have smiles. Then all we'd have is a bunch of smilies.

Don't get the connection with pride. And even though I'm not a great admirer of the Abrahamic religions I do believe that many followers are deeply spiritual.


I do agree with you about their interest in the direct experience. Actually that's what I find frustrating about many of the posts here and the postees, they are more interested in the indirect, the books, the theory, the objectivisation. All of which is very serious stuff as distinction from delightful, luminus, uplifting, joyous.

[vicente]

Vicente, I never meant to say that genuinely spiritual people always have smiles. Then all we'd have is a bunch of smilies.

Don't get the connection with pride. And even though I'm not a great admirer of the Abrahamic religions I do believe that many followers are deeply spiritual.

I do agree with you about their interest in the direct experience. Actually that's what I find frustrating about many of the posts here and the postees, they are more interested in the indirect, the books, the theory, the objectivisation. All of which is very serious stuff as distinction from delightful, luminus, uplifting, joyous.

From my observations it is impossible for a Christian, Muslem, or Jew to be "spiritual" even on a shallow level. Spirituality (a word not found in any of their Holy Scriptures) begins where belief (religion is a set of beliefs) leaves off.

Abrahamic peoples belief in spirituality is similar to their belief in love,...all delusion.


Some say that that spirituality is realized through a loving vibration. This is true, however, what is a loving vibration? Christians believe that their agape love, a love described in the first letter to the Corinthians, is real love. For example, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:7). However, the love depicted in that description is not authentic love. Bearing, believing, hoping and enduring are not love. Those are conditions based on object-ive indoctrination, that is to say, a belief in separation, not on unconditional love. In other words, Christendom’s great chapter on love is merely a discourse on past limitations and future hopes, a love that strives to sustain conditions of conflict, separation, and limitation. Conditional love is born of belief, and as such, it can only be experienced through the conditions of those beliefs. If we ponder that, it is rather amusing. Their god, as other gods, is clearly a conditional god.
Christianity wants us to think that spirit can only be accessed through accepting their Jesus. They want us to think that love can only be had through the conditions of bearing, believing, hoping, and enduring, as in their scriptures. Again, that is not love; that is, in order of Corinthians B.S., the submission, devotion, expectation, and suffering to the conditions of their beliefs.

Christian love is as phoney as their humility and compassion,...it is just another level of pride and salesmenship.

Chögyam Trungpa said, "Compassion is not so much feeling sorry for somebody, feeling that you are in a better place and somebody is in a worse place. Compassion is not having any hesitation to reflect your light on things. That reflection is an automatic and natural process, an organic process. As light has no hesitation, no inhibition about reflecting on things, it does not discriminate whether to reflect on a pile of shit or on a pile of rock or on a pile of diamonds. It reflects on everything it faces."

Even the delusion of the Abrahamic religions.


The existence of the Abrahamic religions is proof that there has been little true compassion in the world. However, an age of compassion and light is near. Whether this means the legend of Shambhala and the holy war to move humanity beyond faith-based ideas of good and evil is true is not for me to say. But the holy war, a worldwide inner battle with the five skandhas, has already begun, and is not likely to be contained in this ever-advancing age of authentic spiritual consciousness. The days of the Abrahamic meme-plex are numbered. In our lifetime, they will be consigned to the back walls of museums.

Tens of thousands have actually been instructed about the holy war through presentations of the Kalachakra initiation, a path to the birthing of spiritual beingness, which at its heart is an empowerment to elevate the precepts of love and compassion as per the teachings of the Vajradhara. The Kalachakra initiation is meant to plant a seed of a love that is not based on the insanity of fear and hope. It inspirits a fierce compassion that does not arise from the five skandhas.


The Kalachakra initiation is a rite of passage to embody a culture of light—the light of Vajra, a passage that exposes the recognition that each and every one has the same equal essence of Vajra. However, this initiation has been presented like someone giving another person a stereogram without any instruction on how to view the three-dimensional image within the two-dimensional abstract.


The authentic initiation is intended to be a confirmation ceremony of actual intrepidity or knighthood, not merely a title or a been-there, done-that, moment. The initiate is being called to Vajradharic and Buddhic consciousness—a knight-magickian of Vajra and a Shambhala warrior.


JV Marco

[schrodinger]

Just what the world needs; a Buddhist jihad!:lol:

[Thomas Knierim]

Count me out. :lol:

Cheers, Thomas

[brother alan]

Fellas, this is serious. The man has plainly been getting no roughage at all. :uhoh: Reflect a little light, here.

An eminently rational person once said a cup is formed of clay, but it's the emptiness inside that makes it a cup. When life hands us a cup-- of grief, of pain, of circumstance-- something wonderful in us may laugh, but... not at the clay.

re-lig-ion:
re ; again.
lig ; from the same root as ligature-- a binding.
ion ; a Thing We Do.

Instruction is made of words, but it is not the words themselves that are instructive. When we ignore the instruction in favor of owning and savoring and sifting the words, we bind ourselves away from what we might have gained. Certainly there is no instruction so holy that some jackass won't make a religion out of it. The "right" response is, of course, laughter.

[schrodinger]

Fellas, this is serious. The man has plainly been getting no roughage at all. .

Odd; I thought he was getting a bit too much.:)



The "right" response is, of course, laughter.

Which is, of course, exactly what we were doing when you told us to get serious. Will you please make up your mind?:think:

[kris]

re-lig-ion:
re ; again.
lig ; from the same root as ligature-- a binding.
ion ; a Thing We Do.

Everyone just loves to speculate on the origin of this word. We went over this not too long ago in Fundamaterialism (http://www.thebigview.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3685). The binding part was refuted there. Based on my observations, I have come to the conclusion that religion is nothing other than a form of insanity. :goodlaugh:

[brother alan]

A grateful world salutes you, Captain Uptake!

Does it help when I use a different color for the ironic parts?

[brother alan]

Everyone just loves to speculate on the origin of this word. We went over this not too long ago in Fundamaterialism (http://www.thebigview.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3685). The binding part was refuted there.

there is no need to speculate about the origins of the word 'religion', Kris, it's a latin word, and its roots are well understood. didn't find anything about binding in Fundamaterialism (http://www.thebigview.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3685), but i thought the originator articulated a complex observation well, and drew an interesting parallel. Thanks for the referral.

[kris]

This is what is said in that other thread: "Real religion" would go back to the root meaning of religion, religio which is derived from relegere which basically means "to observe" (the more familiar etymology from the Latin for "to bind" is a later interpolation from the Roman Catholic Church). You will find this in post #57.

[Michael]

What does the laughter that comes at another´s expense feel like? What residue does it leave with you? That laughter I speak of is the laughter of recognition which is not bound by the shackles of ideastion.

Ideas rise up and cloud our vision - and there´s always another and another idea, but there´s only one reality. Build your house eternal.

[Trevor]

The laughter at someone else's expense feels like a sharp knife tearing into my gut.
I try to avoid watching people on FailBlog on Youtube, especially if it involves physical harm.
If I ever laugh at someone else going through a difficulty, it's because I've been through something similar, and I'm glad that I'm not any longer.
It can also be a bittersweet, double-edged sword. Like this that I sent to a friend that it reminded me of just recently. I hope that she gets a laugh, but at the same time I hope that she see's the reality of how it reminded me of her.
You have to log in to Facebook to view it.
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/video/video.php?v=47323722271&ref=nf
First log on to Facebook, and then click on this link to view the video, otherwise it won't work correctly.

[Michael]

True laughter comes with the recognition of a truth or your oneness with another or the universe. It holds neither words nor ideas. It is a state of awareness which be understood to be a state of grace or satori.

God, Universal Consciousness, the Universe, call it what you will, delights in laughter, it certainly does not hear enough of it. Simply to smile at another person and for that person to smile back from their heart or awareness is a tiny wonder that can light the day, pass from person to person like a wave of light that brings a little harmony more into the world, and beneath that other chains of reaction take place that we cannot see, but which benefit the whole.

Try it yourself. Today look into yourself and find a genuine smile and give it with attention to the Universe or the person beside you or even the cat and observe the change within you.