1 Apr 2010 —
Question
Q159: Humor and Spirituality?
Question 159:
“Is humor a spiritual quality?”
(On the occasion of April 1st Fool Day)
Please reflect deeply and sincerely on the matter before answering. Please make your answer clear and brief (maximum 5 or 6 lines).
yes, i think so; what makes us laugh is a sudden unexpected shift in awareness which creates bliss — and bliss, (ananda) is a quality of brahman, of satchitananda…
also: happiness is a spiritual quality, and a sign of a good, pure, harmonious, loving life..
YES!! God has a great sense of humor!!
Let me be the First fool to answer this question on April fool’s day… Understanding Humour as Humour and appreciating it in the true spirit of Humour withought having any Ego coming in the way is a Spiritual Quality… May be this is a foolish answer… I am leaving it to the other fools reading this to decide…
Yes I agree humor is a part of spirituality
You can only laugh in the present moment; you cannot say: “i will laugh about it in 10 minutes”.
A good one to experience what we say: Do you know how to make God laugh? Tell Him your plans!!!
Good, clean tasteful humor and wit is a part of spirituality. I dunno about obscene humor though, as perpetuated by gossip columns or tv shows and the like. I think that’s not part of spirituality, that’s part of evil. That’s part of finding joy in others’ misery – definitely not spirituality.
🙂 :)Happy fool day..Yes It can be..:) 🙂
It can be, but you can also use humour aggressively – to put someone down or stereotype them. Humour can become a very destructive force, and also a way of avoiding opening emotionally to a situation that calls for our engagement. Sometimes seriousness is the correct response.
However, when we open to the present, and feel wonder at being alive – then there is divine laughter. When we see our troubles in a greater context, we naturally laugh at them. There is a spiritual humour, and it comes from awakening to the glory of the life we are living right now.
.. and what is ‘a spiritual quality?
a quality that brings us closer to spirit, to consciousness, to satchitananda?
.. consciousness is all-pervading omnipresent anyway.. but it may get overshadowed..
i am sure humor and laughing brings us closer to God
Humor is naturally present in those who are spiritual, so yes it is a spiritual quality. It is also a human quality. Many humans use humor to hurt others. In that way it cannot be said that humor is ‘only’ a spiritual quality. May mother bring more humor to my future posts as there is very little in this one!
When i make fun of myself, i acknowledge my shortcomings and let go my ego, which makes humor a spiritual quality. But of course, accepting that i am nobody is one part. Knowing my true inner strength and realizing that i am part of that supreme power (and developing that super ego) through other spiritual practices like meditation, prayer and seva, is another part of spirituality, i guess.
Humor and Spirituality go hand-in-hand.
When you hear a joke, you either “get it” or you don’t. To get it, you have to be alert to the joke, aware of its content and be in the present moment. Note that these are qualities that a sadhak aspires to imbibe in his everyday life.
If you get it, it is a sudden spontaneous experience, a blessing even. It is understood at the gut level and a laughter ensues. ALL IS WELL. ::).
Likewise with enlightenment (as witnessed in the stories of saints of yore). One either “gets it” or not. If one gets it, he goes to permanently blissful state. It is often preceded by a huge bout of laughter.
Humor can be (and is often) used by masters to push their disciples “over the edge” into the openness of enlightenment. There are several Zen stories around this.
raising others from a state of unhappiness to a state of laughter and joy with the help of humor is spiritual and evolutionary
Yea, humor is part of spirituality and like love makes it easier to learn and understand even difficult spiritual lessons. It also helps to break boundaries of all kinds – not only between people but also those borders of set ideas. Spiritual humor is not necessarily sophisticated though masters can do anything with it. Many ceremonies followed by people of all cultures have humor – like teasing – to break ice and bring egolessness.
Yes I believe that humor is a spiritual quality.
Here is a an excerpt from an article:
When the laughing subsided one person said she did not think it was nice to make fun of others like this. Mother responded by saying, “Laughter is good for our hearts. That daughter’s intentions were not to make fun of those people, but to make us all laugh. Seriousness is a disease, and we should try to leave it and allow our selves to laugh more. Laughter is good for the health. People have a 500 kg weight in their bellies that is almost impossible to move. Laughing the way we did — from our hearts — is the best way to open up.”
http://archives.amritapuri.org/amma/2002/0202laugh.php
I believe humor is used in spirituality to emphasize a spiritual message. The human mind will easily grasp and remember the joke whenever such situations come up in life.
Humor devoid of egoism, is spiritual because it helps to move away from the I-ness momentarily, causing happiness and expansive. When we are laughing and feeling happy, our body gets charged with tremendous universal life energy, prana in every cell, which is very rejuvenating for our body.
Of course it is a spiritual quality. Here is a quote from a book or article on Amma:
“People talk of Pranayama and say training in rapid control of breath is good for concentration. If rapid breathing gives concentration, all asthma patients would have attained Self-Realization, Amma joked.”
Oh yes it is indeed! Without humor in the spiritual path people become grumpy or frightening serious!
Yes, spirituality teaches us that we are God experiencing the world in a human body but all the time we are infact searching for God.
Yes, of course. In order to enjoy and appreciate and understand a good joke immediately, one should have a good and pure intellect. And also in order to present a joke and make laugh others, we should have the same quality. We can see these qualities in a spiritual seeker. To make our whole life time humorous one should become spiritual. Actually what is spirituality?To learn or inquiry of our own Pure Self. The inquiry itself is a humorous act.
Oh! Yes! Just observe our Beloved Mother, She is always content and laughing. It´s an exemple for us all. So , lets laugh!!
If we look into Amma’s songs, She said that this life is a big joke. We cannot help but laugh at them all the time. We take birth, grow, make relationship, pretend to do big jobs, make huge money, have lot of people as relatives and family and so forth for what? to take them all to the other side of the graveyard? What a big fool each one of us are? When we think of it, can we stop laughing at ourselves and our life? If we can’t that is, I think, spirituality.
hehe .. .. it’s our serious responsibility not take anything too seriously.. 🙂
most things which we look at seriously today are tomorrows humour..many past things are a humour today for us… thus, humour is much adhered to our spirituality .. spirituality teaches us that even though we are owners of some materials, at the end we leave back all which we owned ….NOW THIS IS THE BIGGEST HUMOUR OF OUR LIFE… isn’t it??
Yes, Humor is definetely a spiritual quality. God has an awesome sense of humor. So does Amma. Humor lightens the heart’s load and makes us see the funny side of life/things/events/situations.
Humor is an asset as long as one is not laughing at another’s expense. Then it is offensive. The best form of humor is to laugh at one’s own follies.
Yes it definitely is, coz both are “light” and bring “happiness” to our life!
This universe is a great stage and all creatures created by God are actors and God is the director. As new-born children we can cry and laugh. But people like humor and laughing and Amma makes crying people laugh by love. Love is a great humor.
I cannot make up my mind in whether humor is a spiritual quality or not because different things are humorous to different kinds of people. There are many occasions where the sense of humour of one person, seems inappropriate to another. But when it comes to one’s self, i feel that a sense of good humor could be beneficial. For example, were i to get into a mess, it would be good for me to view it from a humorous perspective than from one of distress.This cannot be generalised. I suppose it varies with people. it is my opinion that, the humor, if it aids in our spiritual unfolding, can be said spiritual(though i dont know how to identify such humor!!!).
I believe that humor which is lighthearted and pure is an expression of a light and happy heart and comes from a deeply spiritual place within us. This kind of humor comes from our inner child, the part which Amma wants us to cultivate and nourish….our innocense, our purity, our always being in touch with new things and being a beginner. Their is little ego in children. Humor which is jaded, sarcastic and cruel really isn’t humor. It is masking some other darker emotion and calling it funny. If it doesn’t have a quality of sweetness to it, it’s probably at someones’s expense and isn’t spiritual.
Of course, the words that make everyone feel spontaneously joyful is worth be called “Spiritual Humor”, for example AMMA’s Pum Pum story makes me laugh everytime AMMA repeats in Her colloquial language…
Simply humorous and hilarious …