Laughter

Fred Rogers (Mr. Rogers and the Dalai Lama)

A friend gave me this picture of the Dalai Lama sitting and talking with Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers. It is taped to the bulletin board at my desk, and  is a magnificent snapshot of joy and the epitome of contentment.  It is two masters simply enjoying each others company.  Its inspiration derives from its simplicity.  They are intently absorbed in a conversation that is making both of them heartily laugh.  It is both incredibly intimate and wonderfully public.  Cameras were clearly present (for we have the photo) but it appears as if, for each of them, nothing but the other person exists.

I remember a section in “Readers Digest” that I used to read as a young person called “Laughter, The Best Medicine”. Mostly I would find the magazine at my grandmother Yankee Doodle's house.   She got this moniker because when we were little she would sing us "Yankee Doodle".  The name stuck with me and my siblings until she died when I was in my twenties.  Only my siblings and I called her that, the other cousins did not.   At grandma's house, while reading "Readers Digest" there were two sections to which I always looked forward; one was the drama in real life and the other was laughter is the best medicine section.

Laughter is good medicine. There are many studies concluding that laughter as medicine is indeed good for people physically and psychologically. It boosts the immune system, relaxes the body and protects the heart.

When was the last time you laughed?

Our sense of humor, like our fingerprint, dna or retina are our own. What may make one person laugh often makes another cringe.    What we laugh at bears our individual conditioning.  It is both uniquely ours and simultaneously beyond us.

Have you ever wondered where laughter comes from? It is easy to think its our own that it belongs to us, but when you laugh do you choose to laugh or does it simply come. Why are some things funny to you and others not?  They may even be funny at certain times and not at others.  It is clear that certainly some of why we laugh is conditioning. Perhaps even most of it is conditioned.   Translated jokes often fall flat because the meaning is lost in the translation; a particular idiom in one language does not always carry over in another. If you have been conditioned in a particular way you are more likely to find some things funny. At the end though, laughter, like sorrow, passes through us. We cannot say exactly why something is funny it just is funny.

I often said that for me crying was always easy because it always simply felt like something bigger than I was moving through.  I believe it might be the same with laughter. Laughter is an amazing gift. In essence it is the ability to truly see something and celebrate its existence in a manner of speaking. It is a moment of taking off the mask that this life is so serious. It breaks down the subject / object construction. When you are caught up in laughter it is very easy to simply sense there is only this.   Boundaries become more porous amidst great laughter.

That is some of the beauty of the picture between the Dalai Lama and Fred Rogers.

What about the dark side of  laughter? Are some things just NOT funny? Are some things OFF limits?

Answer: It is often said that tragedy and comedy are two sides of the same coin. That said,

I don’t know – how would you answer that question for yourself? Are you trying to cede the authority over your own sense of humor? Do you want permission to laugh at something? What is holding you back from laughing? I would venture its someone’s approval or disapproval? What does that mean or suggest?

The last time I laughed was  Saturday at Star Trek. There were a number of places where I laughed out loud.   My laugh is quite boisterous.  My partner speaks of knowing she loved me when she loved my laugh.  I often laugh at parts that many others do not laugh or in anticipation of a joke that is about to come.  I am often amused by that observation.   Laughter sits in many ways at the nexus of some interesting ontologies.   It is both an incredibly private act; what makes you laugh is uniquely derived from the conditioning you've experienced but at the same time much of that conditioning is subject to societal and cultural influences.  On the other hand, jokes and humor rely upon shared perpsective and understanding.  Perhaps that is why jokes and what is funny can often be such a touchy subject.  "Inside joke" comes from the ability of jokes to circumsribe social roles, include and exclude and consequently influence how people feel.   Peoples feelings get hurt when some jokes are told.  Jokes are often used as a social navigation tool.  "We are like them - they will find this funny - those people over there they won't find this funny therefore I won't share it with them".  How often have you not shared a joke or limited who you shared it with  because you were afraid?

It is very easy to take a joke serioiusly.  It is very easy to take a joke to actually mean something.  A joke, if it reflects anything, reflects its teller's idea of themself much more than it reflects anything that might really be true.  That said, they can still hurt.  It is very hard to remember this in the moment.   The power of humor, and  jokes and laughter can be used for ill too so this is not subscribe to anything that makes you laugh is necessarily good.  Jokes can be incredibly mean spirited. Because  most people are not aware of who they really are, they are susceptible to others words triggering pain. Jokes can hurt immensely,  they can exclude and make one feel alone,  they can tap into our unresolved issues, hurts and deep seated fears.  Beacuse we carry the conditioning of culture and few have worked through the pain of the many, many messages in society that would hide or undermine who we are in our glory,  jokes can diminish and they can be used to exclude and ostracize.  But for all of that, it is important to note that ultimately joke's only have the meaning and power we give them and to note that they do not touch who we are in our core. 

If a joke triggers something in us, is that not a place where we are giving ourselves a substance that might not really be there?  Is it the case that we are taking ourselves too seriously? Is it not to be falsely duped by a mirage? It is a mirage that nearly all in culture and society ascribe to but a mirage nonetheless.  Though this may be difficult, notice what happens internally and externally  the next time someone tells a joke?  Does it exclude?  Do "you" belong to the inside experience in the joke or the outside?  How does that change (or not) your experience of the joke?  The joke can be your practice.

So if a joke ultimately means nothing does that mean that we have license to create and repeat mean jokes or that if something mean is said that I should do nothing, since its not real anyway?

Is that what your heart tells you to do?  Reality is capable of holding all.  It is only a dualistic mind that wants things to be one way or the other.  It is the dualistic mind that says well if its not real why should I bother.  It is the dualistic mind that reels in the freedom of not having a presription for what to do.   Reality often says "both and".   In the absolute,  "meanness"  does not exist,  but if you conclude from the that that action is useless, or that you can then be mean then you have missed the point. You are no longer in reality.  Reality asks a nimbleness of us it says it is all possible but that it might be is advisable that one take action after a joke that is mean spirited, even if that joke does not ultimately mean anything. 

Laughter is a truly amazing gift.   Laughter is a signature for our unique humor.    This is perhaps a tad blasphemous and certainly irreverent but I don't sometimes wonder if life itself is not a grand joke.  I don't in fact mean it the way that many might take it.  I mean it in the most generous way.  I mean it as something that is filled with such intense wonder, humor and joy.  I mean it as a great comedy show that is always producing amazing gaffes, fantastic ironies, jolting jokes and phenomenal twists.    If we could slow down for just a moment, and realize that its all going to be ok I suspect we might be laughing a lot more.  

Find the funny and laugh!

Truth

 

Of recent, I have been thinking, musing, meditating and reflecting,  a lot, upon truth.   I feel drawn towards what it is asking of me.   It seems that it is calling me moment by moment to a new kind of life, a new kind of adventure.  It is not one in which I understand much, but that is part of what makes it exciting and vibrant. 

 As a little boy, I always dreamed of being some kind of hero.  I dreamt of slaying dragons or flying deep into space and discovering new planets and species.   (Can we say science-fiction geek) I would be face to face with danger and fear and I would prevail.  I was thrilled by those who sacrificed themselves for all of humanity.  I admired  martyrs or savior archetypes.  I am still drawn to that kind of fiction.  Give me Frodo Baggins or Paul Atreides,   Katniss Everdeen, Commander Amelia Shepard any day.  I will always take them. What is interesting now though is that I can feel that adventure in life itself.  As truth’s voice becomes clearer not necessarily on any cosmic or grandly goal oriented scale but in the minutiae of heeding its moment to moment requests, I realize there is more than enough adventure in even the most simple of lives.  For me to align with truth in the moment requires a submission and staggering courage.  Standing  as who you are, unfettered and undaunted by the myriad ways the world tells you otherwise is thrilling.  This is the adventure.  

 It is easy to make truth a concept, a simple set of rules, prescriptions, ideas, commandments, laws, bargains, and  justifications but truth precedes them all.  Truth gives rise to them all.  They all try to capture truth, but fail because truth is ever moving even in its stillness.  It is quieter than all those concepts and yet much more powerful,  in part because it does not need anything else.  Truth is its own contentment; it is it own end.  As this silent voice is felt moment to moment to moment I recognize that I do not know anything.  I recognize that it could ask anything of me in the next moment.  It is anything but predictable.  This makes for a very exciting existence.  Anything in the world could show up and many things we have not even begun to imagine could appear too.  What could be more exciting than that?   What could be more exciting than answering that call?  The courage to truly be who I am with all my beauty and ugliness, perfection within my imperfection is mindblowing in its vibrancy. 

The call of truth to meet truth in all it manifestations in the world is exciting.  It is also terrifying.   Currently I can feel the schizophrenia.  On the one hand safety exists.  One can always do things the easy way.  One can always keep the status quo.  One does not need to rock the boat.  (And of course this is ultimately fine).   Truth has no need for judgment only our minds and ego’s do.  On the one hand it is not hard to say things like you have always said to people around you.  There is safety in saying I’m fine when really I’m really frustrated.  There is safety in telling the white lie about  someone’s outfit so as not to hurt their feelings.  There is convenience when we take the pens from the office but don’t believe  we will get caught.  There is ease in pretending  not to see that person as they approached elevator so that we could get to our floor more quickly.  There is safety in remaining  quiet and not saying hello to that person who passed us by because we were afraid they would think we were creepy.  There is safety in keeping quiet when our colleague gossips about another colleague.  There is convenience when we rapidly consume precious resources.  The path of safety always exists.  And in then end who ARE is more important than what we do.  But the calling is about embodying the perfection of our essence.   Safety becomes less appealing relative to truth.   

While there is safety as a choice,  for this body/mind currently,  the gap between truth and embodiment of it in the world is increasingly challenging.  It is becoming more painful  to act out of alignment. But its not even painful because I expect more of myself or have some idea of how I should behave exactly.  It’s painful because as I’ve realized more thoroughly  what I am, I  want to consciously be it all the time.   In the past,  I have been motivated by reward or by fear.  Believe me they still operate.  But they seem to be very juvenile forces for moving and action and it feels like they  take place in this much larger arena.  Terms like retribution, payback, reward, punishment  and even karma,  and  justice how they are sometimes used, rely upon the future.   They rely upon something being different than it is now and  depend on a notion that things are at some level wrong with this moment as a means of moving people to do act.  That feels less interesting.  How often  I have been motivated to do good for the promise of some cookie or sweet treat or to avoid something bad.   But actually there is a motivator that is beyond each of those and it is who we are in our core.  It is the essence of the world.

 In some religions people are afraid of some grand judgment from God that will banish us from “his” presence or that we will suffer at some later time.  I say Baaah.  In truth, we suffer more than enough for anything that isn’t aligned with truth.  Love is all forgiving.  In fact, in a way, for love, forgiveness does not even exist because from love’s perspective whatever it is that would “need forgiving” is ultimately just another manifestation of love itself.  It is just love showing up in some other way.   There is no grand judgment that one fails and is punished or rewarded for.  Not being aligned with truth IS its own suffering.  It is its own hell.   And if there is the notion that something is too big or “evil” for forgiveness that is not true either.  Truth is all embracing, the end.   God is ALL forgiving the end. There is not anything anyone could do that would ever move them out of the divine’s grace.  At the same time, I don’t wonder if most, if not all of any current pain (that isn’t purely physical) doesn’t come from unresolved past moments in which we were not aligned with truth.   It’s like the shape that shows up, who I take myself to be are all the places where I am not transparent.  It is all the places where pain has latched on to some kind of framework and I am creating a somebody out of it.   Yes, the pain happens.  It is absolutely real.  Yes, it hurts.  But who hurts?   Who is it actually happening to?  In fact, exactly who am I?  Am I this body?  Am I my thoughts?  This projection into the future? Am I my past experiences?  

Increasingly I can hear and feel something that wants to be expressed and I can tell that to be true to it I must let go (even amidst uncertainty and fear). Again this letting go is not on some grand scale.  This is not splendor on display.  It is again meeting truth moment to moment to moment and who knows what it will request.  If up to this point in my life I had clear plans for what needed to be done and what needed to be saved, and what  theories of action in the world might bring about lasting change,  it feels as though they are about to be subsumed in a silence driven by the heart.  Silence animates all regardless of whether or not we have paid attention to it.   It is this silence whose drumbeat continues to  resonate more clearly.  I will keep you posted as it all develops.

 

What Do I Call You On This Day?

 

I

God is brokenhearted today.

I see it in the eyes of people all around me.

A monk immolates himself in protest against the regime

Another gunned down as his brothers watch in horror.

A woman cries “why not me” as her lover rends her heart

by choosing another.

A mother wraps her bald head in a scarf pretending it is

winter’s grip which is icy.

A child cries as she is kicked in the head by her friend on the swings.

Her friend cries too.

So many tears, such incredible suffering

And yet in the space of the story so much is left unsaid.

 

 

II

The girl now committed to justice in a far away land.

In the spaces.

A father toiling to change gun laws.

In the spaces.

Lovers gazing into the silence of each other’s eyes.

In the spaces.

Researchers mapping complex molecules and genes in a puzzle of

Dazzling and cosmic proportions. At stake the soul of existence.

In the spaces.

 

III

One could say that it's the ying and yang

Black and white, the give and take.

And this too would be right.

But even these are too neat and shiny a ribbon for

A package of infinite beauty.

Today, I will call you life.

on the lines and in the spaces.

All of it everywhere

So rich, so simple, so bittersweet.

 

 

Dangerous Truth

Before they put him to rest they sang songs that called him nice.

And celebrated him with accolades.

He was always diplomatic, sweet,  careful.

words weighed to balance equations as he spoke.

Angling  pictures perfectly on the wall.

But even colorful, flat two-dimensional portraits can only represent depth.

And what is emerging now is no longer nice.

Instead it speaks of bare honesty.

honesty that will let nothing hide.

honesty of a searing glare.

honesty  willing to

sacrifice all because it is all.

Truth will set you free.

It will strip away more than you bargained for.

It will ask everything of you.

It will take everything.

If it did anything less, it would not be truth.

My Uncle Baba

Certainty, quietude, unearthly confidence
grounded not in a body or a mind
but in timelessness that continues.
A boisterous bellow.
We all share your laugh; a signature of sorts
an echo in those you leave behind.
My grandfather runs through your veins
as it does through my own and my son's.
Piercing eyes and a shock of white hair
set against rich, mahoghany skin.
A community Moses bridging troubled waters
to liberate and carry the shackled to the shores of freedom.

A diamond orator voice blending hues of light
in the crucible of your existence,
sourced from an ebony heart, pumped by an infinite
and almighty hand.
Smiles close the distance between
our of existences
your smile will be missed most.
Its fiery warmth a black ashen coal ready
to inflagrate and reduce us all to to the glorious
essence of our sacred and illumined core.

Let us each grieve in our own ways;
tears, fierce recommitement to action, surreal confusion,
a candle lit in a far away place, a stoic and soundless
perserverance, a prayer offered on a dark and beatuiful continent.
the shouts of children in quiet places.
All embraced.
Your important lesson; the myriad expressions of divinity
that come through us; evident even now in the grief that grips the room.
I will see you wherever soulfullness blossoms,
the shifting shapes of the candles flicker
the space between thoughts
the place where earth and sky eternally embrace.

Contentment

How does the world look when you don’t need anything from it? So much of so many of our lives is spent pursuing. There are more ways to pursue happiness than there are people. Most never find. Perhaps they find moments of happiness or a break from the drum of stress, but daily life asserts itself once again and the constant stress and threat that many live with rises to the foreground. I once had a friend describe his capacity to worry like the law of the vacuum wherein empty space is abhorred. In her life it seemed like the moment she let go of one worry another popped in. She even noticed that the character of her worries had changed over the years as her situation improved and stability increased . But despite the character change they were no less frequent or aggravating. I think her situation is similar to many. We worry about things because we believe it will give us an manner in which to control that which Is beyond us. Its as if worrying enough we believe we will affect the outcome.

But if I don’t worry how will I change the situation I am in? Doesn’t worry enable me to produce solutions? Besides I do not know how to stop worrying?

I might differentiate here between worry and analysis and action. Worry keeps one in a loop of fear hyped up on potential outcomes none of which you can know in advance. Analysis looks at the same data and says at the moment I can do a, b, and c and after that I will do 1, 2, and 3. Analysis can even look to the future to say if a, b, or c happens I will do 1, 2, or 3. But notice that in each case there is not really a problem. There is simply stimulus and response, a cause and a map of potential courses. We are so conditioned to analyzing within the context of our worry that we lose sight of how to separate them. With analysis the mind is not spinning and the body is not contracted around what might come to be. The truth is we never really know what is going to come to be yet we delude ourselves into thinking we know all the time. Perhaps if the sense of no control pervaded the mundane more clearly it would not be so acute during crises. The not knowing, the uncertainty could make its all so much more of an exciting adventure but usually people stress. It is a mistaken sense of self that turns everything into a problem. It is a mistaken sense of who we are that obscures our ability to simply act in concert with what the situation asks. The heart does not worry about pumping? And as for stopping worrying you don’t. It too is a magical part of the fabric of life. You simply notice it when it appears and get curious and kind towards what the worry thinks it will accomplish. It will either go away then or not, in either case it is again , no problem.


Worry is incredibly well meaning, it thinks it can protect you. It thinks it can help you resolve something out there in the future that is the source of anxiety. It cannot. It does not realize that it IS the cause of anxiety. But rather than make worry an enemy and try to rid oneself of it sidle up next to it and take it into your heart. What happens then?

Why do we go to the movies? What kind of movies do you like? Do you read fiction?  Movies come in all shades, shapes, colors, themes, topics and perspectives. It is the same with books. Do we watch movies to escape? Maybe, but often movies are just depicting slices of life. It is the same with books. Even if the situation is fantastical or completely imagined it still depicts some aspect of existence otherwise it couldn’t be written. In these movies or books we often experience a range of emotions and thoughts  from sadness to elation to fear, happiness, righteousness, anger or anxiety. In the context of the movie or book it is part of what we actually pay for. When we go see a romantic comedy we understand that at some point two people will meet. At some point there will be difficulty in their relationship and usually they will get back together at the end. In the horror film we go to be scared or to see if the movie is capable of scaring us. In many ways life is not much different except that we come to believe that the story is solid and real. In a movie or book at the end no matter how enchanted we were , we are able to separate the movie from who is watching the movie. What capacity allows you to identify with the characters in the movie or book? Who/what is it that identifies with characters in the book or movies? What capacity is it that enables you to identify with your own story? Who or what identifies with your own story? I have often said that with the right editing a compelling movie could be made of anyone’s life. So if we go to the movies or read books and enjoy them are we not paying for the emotions and experiences that in another context we are often trying to rid ourselves of? In  its essence there is nothing wrong with any emotion. They simply are and they are not  wrong or problematic for being there. We only struggle when we see the emotions as something that we need to overcome. As the movie demonstrates they are part of the wondrous fabric that keeps life real, beautiful, engaging and dynamic.

Even when discontent shows up do not fret. It does not mean you have done anything wrong or that you are less spiritual or that something is wrong or fill in whatever sweet treat one’s ego is feeding itself on at the moment. They are all ways of strengthening a self if you bite. That which is capable of noticing the discontent, your true essence, is capable of holding it all, the contentment and the discontent. If there is discontent, ask if you are identified with the person/body/mind whose life-circumstance does not have everything lined up perfectly or are you aligned with that tender and compassionate “space” which can see that discontent and offers up its heart to it. It offers its heart not to necessarily change it or eliminate it but simply because that is its nature; tender, caring, kind.

How would it feel if you knew in your deepest depths that everything is ok. Not that it would be ok when you got to heaven or that it would be ok in 10 minutes or in two days or after you accomplished this or read that book or finished this meditation,  but now. Actually it is more than ok it is absolutely beautiful and perfect. It does not mean that there won’t be be pain and dread, difficulty, sadness, hardship, grief, and sorrow but in a way does that matter. It means that there is less of need for it to be different than the way it is. It means that when change needs to happen it happens and is not a source of worry or anxiety. Unless of course it is a source of worry and anxiety in which case it still is ok.  :-)

There is nothing to get, nowhere to go.  All you ever needed is right here. They say home is where the heart is. Well, we live in the Kingdom of Heaven. We just forget our address sometimes.

Black

Black.
Crime festered hoods, drug overlords, poverty punished ghettos,
HIV/AIDS ravaged cadavers, down-low deceivers, violent thug gangs ,
misogynistic populism, health disparities run amok, fissuring educational gaps, skyrocketing unemployment.
When that loud group of boys got on the bus how I recoiled in judgement.
The distance I tried to place between myself and that shadow
earned me a lifetime of imprisonment, stuck in my own foul reflection.

Black.
But now as I look, I see an primal energy, raw and irrepressible, a sacred strength
passed on through decades of hardship, in song, food, and fellowship
and the ability to endure the most nightmarish tempests
such will erase and transmute the jim crows and apartheids
because nothing less than love and truth are the alchemical agents
working to free us all at last.

Black.
I used to be afraid of the dark
but now I embrace it in wholeness.
When you sit alone in the true depths of darkness
you begin to be breathed by it and you realize
that chasing the light can be a distraction.
I celebrate the mystery of darkness
I surrender myself to the unknown
to discover in each shadowy moment
the inherent beauty of the night.