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Buddhism

Since its origin on the Indian subcontinent, Buddhism has been transmitted to a diverse range of cultures throughout Asia and more recently throughout the world. Buddhist thought and practice have thus been expressed in a variety of different languages and interacted with a variety of different cultures and religions. Because of its accommodative stance to other religions, Buddhism has often combined with or assimilated a range of religious traditions throughout Asia. It is thus difficult to reach any overarching generalizations about the role of humor in Buddhism. This entry focuses mainly on Buddhism in East Asia. This is not because humor is necessarily more prominent in this cultural area. It is mainly because studies of Buddhism and humor have focused primarily on East Asian sources and traditions.

Buddhist Ambivalence About Humor

As in the case of Christianity, the attitude to humor within Buddhism has often been ambivalent. In early Buddhist texts such as Buddhacarita and Dhammapada, the Buddha himself questioned how people could laugh given that human existence is marked by old age, disease, death, and suffering. The precept concerning right speech, a part of the noble eightfold path the Buddha taught as being the path to enlightenment, can also be read as discouraging at least some forms of humor, laughter, and mirth. As did some early Christian theologians concerning Jesus, some early Buddhist scholastics questioned whether the Buddha ever laughed. Some concluded that the Buddha never went beyond the faintest of smiles. This is perhaps the peaceful smile expressed in many Buddha images where the corners of the Buddha's mouth are ever so slightly upturned.

While these observations suggest that humor has only a marginal role in Buddhism, the matter is not so simple. It is difficult, first of all, to deduce a religion's attitudes to humor by relying solely on its central sacred texts. In addition, there may well be openness to a range of types of humor embodied in that faintest of smiles the Buddha is said to have engaged in. Many who have followed the path of the Buddha and attained some degree of realization or enlightenment seem to have openness to at least some types of humor. A taste or glimpse of enlightenment, which involves at least a partial transcendence of the ego and a realization of the limitations of much human thought, seems to open the way for some Buddhists to perceive both themselves and the world around them with a degree of irony and humor. Many Buddhist figures, such as the present Dalai Lama, have been known to possess a marked sense of humor.

Chan/Zen Buddhism

Considerable attention has been given to the role of humor in the school of Chan (in Japanese, Zen) Buddhism that arose in China in 6th century CE as a result of the interaction of Buddhism with Chinese modes of thought and religion. Many have argued that Taoism played a major role in the Chinese transformation of Buddhism. As seen in one of its major texts, Zhuangzi (Master Zhuang), some Taoist thought exhibits considerable appreciation of humor and makes extensive use of paradox, irony, and amusing anecdotes to illustrate the inability of language and concepts to fully grasp the truth. Taoism viewed society, the state, and overly rational forms of philosophy as imposing unnatural constraints on the individual and made use of humor and a comic perspective to free one from these constraints in order to attain a more natural mode of being in the world. Given its distrust of society, the state, and common sense, it is not surprising that Taoism also produced and celebrated a number of “holy fools” known for their often humorous eccentricity.

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