Lighten Up -- Again!

"The key to feeling at home with your body, mind and emotions, to feeling worthy to live on this planet, comes from being able to lighten up. When your aspiration is to lighten up, you begin to have a sense of humor. Things just keep popping your serious state of mind."

---Pema Chodron, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living

"Get your mind unbound and free; and then from the loosest, highest, best place you have, with the fastest and most humorous mind you can get together, you can reach out and make a try at  understanding Spirit."

---Stephen Gaskin, This Season's People

All too often, it seems like those of us who are sincere spiritual seekers can get a bit too stodgy, a bit too stiff, a bit too serious about it all.  

 

It's not surprising, I suppose.

Although it's true that some of the folks drawn to Buddhism had experienced lives of relative comfort, achievement, and success (before realizing that there was still something lacking,) I think many folks were like me. I'd had a hard go of it.  

 

Growing up in what the psychiatrist, addictions specialist, author and teacher Dr. Gabor Mate describes as a toxic culture, my life, like the lives of many of us had included serious trauma.  I just about ace'd the freakin' ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) test!

 

So, when I stumbled across Buddha's Four Noble Truth's I was transfixed.  The First Noble Truth -- that Suffering is inherent in the impermanence of the human condition -- rang True.  I knew suffering to be real in my life.   

 

The Buddha's witnessing of sickness, old age, and death were part of my experience.  My grandmother disintegrated as she lost her bout with cancer.  A special friend disappeared from the school playground because of a failed tonsillectomy.  And beyond these examples of the universal human condition, my childhood had been especially chaotic and troubling.

 

By the time I was six, I had witnessed my mother being swept up into extreme mental states and behaviors.  She disappeared from my life for large swathes of time.  Each time she was hospitalized in a state institution, my father's inability to work full-time and take care of four children (three under the age of 6 the first time) led to him finding"foster" settings -- seemingly with families that just needed the money.  I experienced sexual abuse in each.  

Although my inherent capacity to experience the wonders of childhood curiosity, exploration, and discovery remained intact (most often while wandering around alone), I suffered through a revolving door of frightening and painful experiences throughout elementary school and junior high school.  

During that time Mom would get well and the three youngest would return to live with her.  Then, she would get "unwell" -- and we were off to live with strangers.  Then she would be fine.  And then she wasn't.  My world was a kaleidoscopic swirl of new teachers, new schools, new homes, new "families," detention centers, truant officers, social workers -- and police officers.  I was touched by the kindness of some.  I wasn't touched so kindly by others.

Extremely sensitive ( my radar had been fine-tuned to Mom's moods to know when to seek safety), I also saw and felt suffering in the folks around me -- whether expressed or not.  So many folks seemed unhappy, frightened, angry, sad.

I also saw suffering in the larger world around me as it played out in the stark black and white of television.  The mystery, cowboy, and army shows bristled with malevolence, murder, and mayhem.  The television news was probably even worse because it purported to be real.  

The First Noble Truth? Suffering part of life? Check. I read on.  

When I discovered that the man known as the Buddha asserted that there was a specific cause for suffering, I was intrigued.  Then, when he proclaimed that there was a freaking way out of suffering,  I was hooked! 

Seriously? Damn! Sign me up! 

 

(Of course, at that time, living in rural Northern Illinois, there weren't a whole lot of Buddhists around.  But that's another story for another time. )

 

Getting Serious

 

I've discussed spirituality with lots of folks over the decades -- many of who were drawn to other spiritual traditions.  It seems there often a similar dynamic. Whether seeking nirvana or heaven,  sat chit ananda or atonement, we were seeking some form of release from a painful, dissatisfying, confusing, seemingly meaningless, existence.  We were all looking for Light at the end of the tunnel.  Then, whatever our specific path, at a certain point we knew that we had to make a committed effort.  We get serious about it. 

Unfortunately, some of us then got deadly serious about it.  I, for one, know that I got way too fanatical about it.  I was on a mission to point how how serious our situation was on this planet, how important spiritual practice was.  It's all I wanted to talk about.  My friends used to hate to see me coming.  I could quickly squeeze the life out of any party. 

 

It wasn't until that "oh so serious"bubble burst with a quip and belly laugh (and a joint) that I began to lighten up again.  I saw clearly that what some folks call the Cosmic Joke was for real!  Sometimes the wise crack is how the Light gets in!  A sense of humor is one of humanity's superpowers. 
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Although sarcasm and other forms of humor can be mindless and cruel, True Humor, at its best, is a Holy Balm, a Healing Art.  It's High Magic. Dante wasn't the only one who conjured up the spiritual path from hell to heaven as The Divine Comedy.  The Jokester, the Fool, the Coyote, the Clown, are present in some form in in many spiritual traditions.  Laughter, with its sense of playfulness and joy, are aspects of living life wholeheartedly.

 

So, at this point, if some future Worldwide Buddhist Conference was ever considering the addition of a ninth element to the Eightfold Path, Right Humor would get my vote.  Like members of any religious tradition, some Buddhists can get a bit too joyless about it all. (As the photo above suggests, the Dalai Lama might be in my corner on this. )

 

While I'm at it, I've got another pitch to make.  I probably don't have much standing with the College of Cardinals.  I bailed from Catholic School after just five days, although I had received a First Communion authorized by my friend Ronnie who had just received his first communion the week before. (The priest hesitated when I appeared at the altar, but Ronnie nodded and he layed it on me.)  Yet, I'd like to recommend to the College of Cardinals that any candidate for Pope should have a serious sense of humor.  This Dude has to handle an enormous amount of energy. The Vatican appears to be a pretty uptight place.  (I'm still hoping against hope that at some point soon an archeologist will unearth ancient scrolls containing the Jokes of Jesus to educate future Popes -- and, of course, strengthen my case.)

But I digress...

 

Lojong Light: The Case for Laughter
 
The 21st slogan of the Lojong Trainings* of Tibetan Buddhism is: Always Maintain Only a Joyful Mind.  Pema Chodron, among others, points out that a sense of joy primarily involves "lightening up."  She sees a sense of humor as an essential aspect of this.  

 

Although we all may not be destined to be stand-up comics, I believe that each of us can learn to approach our lives with a bit more playfulness and humor.  It takes some curiosity and openness to explore this, but I've seen that a sense of humor (especially about myself) can free me from the judgmental mind that emerges from grasping onto a fixed model of how I should be, how others should be.  Sometimes I've just shut up in a difficult situation, relaxed, and listened until a quip emerges spontaneously that changes the energy in the room completely. 

I've read that the Latin root of the word humor means "moisture, fluid."  That makes sense to me.  Humor often serves to loosen things up.  I think we've all seen how a bit of wit, a laugh, or sometimes, just a simple smile at the proper moment, can lubricate a situation.   I've seen how this can help release the energy when folks were apparently caught between a rock and a hard place. 

 

Examining it closely, I've seen there is a distinct movement of energy that occurs during laughter.  This form of release has a healing effect.  In fact, Norman Cousins, longtime editor of the Saturday Review, wrote in his best seller, An Anatomy of an Illness, that ten minutes of belly laughs while watching a Marx brothers film would give him two hours of relief from the pain of a fatal debilitating disease.  He claimed that this "laugh therapy" extended his life for years. 

 

It makes sense to me. There was a time in my life that a comedic movie marathon helped me turn the tide on a severe bout of depression. The next morning I was able to take a shower and leave the house to do errands.  Although I no longer am prone to these depressive episode, I still can turn to an old Sitcom or movie in the evening to lighten up -- then meditate into sleep.  

The Last Laugh

 

Over the years, I've seen that the quality of mind that produces laughter can be cultivated.  As a person whose childhood conditioning produced a harsh and judgemental attitude towards myself, that erupted in a lot of unhealthy ways, I've lightened up -- a lot.  As Practice has deepened, it is most noticeable when I discover that I am "lost in thought" on the meditation cushion. Rather than become angry with myself, I often find myself grinning as I return to the present moment with mindfulness and open awareness.  ( Thich Nhat Hanh suggests we mediate with a "half smile" to prime the pump.) 

 

So, it's true that a perception of the Real Deal can sometimes emerge like a bolt of lightening, or in a flood of tears, it can also readily appear with a smile, a chuckle -- or a belly laugh.  We perceive Life as It Is -- and it's a Hoot. 

But, maybe you don't agree.  Maybe I'm just trying too hard to be a wise guy and I've got it all wrong.  If so, when we meet at the pearly gates, you may get the last laugh!

I hope you don't mind if I join you.


*In the Tibetan tradition of mind training, Lojong Practice consists of working with a series of training slogans as a framework for understanding how Mind operates, and as an aid in actualizing our commitments to kindness, clarity and compassion -- both on and off the zafu.  I wrote a bit more extensively about Lojong in "The (Heart) Beat Goes On" in the MMM Courtesy Wake Up Call awhile back.