Do Buddhist monks ever laugh out loud?

I don't think I have ever seen a picture of a monk laughing out loud in a belly-laugh kind of a way. I mean the kind where tears come to your face as when watching a Richard Pryor or an Eddie Murphy show.

They smile some, wear contented looking faces a lot but never something beyond a thoughtful, far-away looking smile.

In a book that I am reading by Lin Yutang he talks about 3 views of mankind - the traditional Christian, the Greek pagan view and the Chinese view. He adds - "(I do not include the Buddhist view because it is too sad.)"

Is the relative absence of highs a fair price to pay for the relative absence of lows. Is it consistent with human nature.

Comments

Miljenko said…
The line about the relative absence of lows is actually mine and not from the book but the book is "The Importance of Living."
January 12, 2007 10:57 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Sex Addiction" - give me a break ...

I am getting a little bit tired of the whole "sex addiction" racket out there. Sex is not an addiction any more than skating backwards is. It may feel good to have air blowing up your behind (or to have sex) but that does not an addiction make. And if you feel you are addicted, just stop skating backwards! The problem is that calling it an "addiction" trivializes addictions which are real and substantive. The operative word being "substantive" meaning there is a substance involved (although this may not be the correct usage of the term substantive). With real addictions be it alcohol, drugs, nicotine or prescription drugs, there is always a substance at work which makes us feel a certain way ("good" or at least "better" than without it). From that emerges an addiction to that "feel good effect" and in that sense, yes, food can be an addiction also but sex cannot. Of course sex feels good, it is supposed to and without it feeli...
Read more

Things we can do by ourselves, and things that we can't

Making a list (and not checking it twice) of things one can do by oneself and those which one can only do with somebody else. Please feel to contribute. Things one can do by oneself - read, run, swim, meditate, eat, hike, chop wood, ski, drink, dance, sleep, play chess, cook, sing, practice any number of sports, feel guilt (as opposed to shame). Things that can be done only with participation of at least one other person - hug, kiss, have a conversation, get or give a massage, shake hands, play any number of sports, entertain somebody else with one's dance, singingor writing, feel shame (as opposed to guilt).
Read more

Meeting people is like walking up to a new mirror

Despite what we may think about "knowing ourselves" and knowing who we are, we can only understand who we really are from the reflection of ourselves in other people's eyes. The only way that the Universe perceives us is through observation of others and in that way it's a bit of a Schroedinger's cat going on. The observed is influenced by the observers and it has no other state than the observed one. To put it differently, if there was nobody around us, would we really know who we are? So every new person we meet is like a new mirror that we face and it shows us an image of ourselves that is always to some extent different than any other mirror. Some are more precise reflection of the actual molecules that we are really composed of while others are more "kind" to our imperfections, physical and otherwise. And of course, just for fun, there are the hall of mirrors distorting mirrors that show us grotesquely different than reality and those are just that ...
Read more