Laughter is, for some, the response to the absurdity of life, or a defense against the sorrow of life. For others it is the response to the insight of self-realization. For an infant it is pure spontaneous feeling toward life in general. Life is not funny or sad, it is the observer who sees it as happy or sad. Life just is as it is meant to be.
As the observer, we laugh or cry only due to our attachment to anything. Once we let go, there is no more sorrow and no more laughter, only observation. Yet the ancient texts tell us of the inherent nature of our self as consciousness, of how it is not only eternal, fully conscious, but also blissful, containing ananda. Therefore they tell us that enlightenment results in finding your bliss, your inner bliss that is not dependent on the externals.
In that mood, I present chapter four of my revelation and gospel on the way, the truth and the laugh.
THE ACHINTYA BHEDA-ABHEDA TATTVA
By Jas Das babaji
CHAPTER 4: The Cosmic Joke
On Hasya—The Sacred Relationship of Laughter with the Divine
1. There are five primary flavors of devotion—neutrality, servitude, parental care, friendship, and romantic love—but there is a sixth that seasons all the others: hasya, the sacred mood of laughter that bubbles up when the soul recognizes the cosmic joke.
2. The universe is God playing hide-and-seek with himself, and the laughter begins when you realize you are both the hider and the seeker, and there was never anywhere to hide.
3. The avadhuta walks naked through the marketplace because he has forgotten which costume he was supposed to wear today—and this forgetting is not ignorance but the highest knowledge laughing at its own disguises.
4. A Zen master was asked, "What is the difference between you and the Buddha?" He replied, "Three steps"—and in that moment, ten students became confused, one became angry, and one laughed so hard he fell off his cushion into enlightenment.
5. You have been searching for God in temples, churches, mosques, and caves, when God has been playing the seeker all along—is this not hilarious?
6. The ego is the only part of you that cannot survive being laughed at by itself; this is why humor is more dangerous to illusion than a thousand hours of serious meditation.
7. A monk spent forty years in a cave achieving perfect stillness, emerged to announce his enlightenment, slipped on a fallen mango, and in that fall understood all that four decades of solemnity had taught him.
8. When you realize that the river frantically trying to reach the ocean is already made of ocean, only laughter is the appropriate response—tears would be redundant, and solemnity would be lying.
9. The Bhakti Rasamrita Sindhu teaches that hasya arises when the devotee sees the divine in ridiculous situations—Krishna stealing butter, playing pranks, dancing with impossible physics—because perfection that cannot laugh is not perfect.
10. Why is enlightenment always accompanied by laughter? Because the seeker discovers he was standing on the treasure the whole time, yet searching everywhere else.
11. The difference between a madman and a sage is that the madman thinks his absurdity is serious, while the sage knows his seriousness is absurd.
12. You think you are a person seeking God, but you are God seeking himself while pretending to be a person—this is comedy of such exquisite craftsmanship that Rumi would weep with laughter.
13. A student asked, "Master, what happens after enlightenment?" The master laughed and said, "You still stub your toe, but now you know who stubbed it, why there was a toe, and who adjusted the gravity—and then you laugh while hopping."
14. The serious seeker carries enlightenment like a boulder up a mountain; the laughing seeker realizes the mountain is a molehill, the boulder is a pebble, and the one carrying it is a dreamer.
15. Hasya is not mockery but recognition—like suddenly seeing the punchline of a joke the universe has been telling for thirteen point eight billion years.
16. If God is perfectly blissful, perfectly content, and perfectly complete, why create the universes? For the same reason a child builds sandcastles—for the sheer playful joy of it, knowing the tide will erase them all.
17. Your spiritual practice, no matter how noble, is God playing dress-up; your suffering, no matter how painful, is God playing hide-and-seek; your seeking, no matter how sincere, is God pretending to be lost.
18. The Buddha's first words after enlightenment should have been laughter, but he took pity on those who would misunderstand, so he spoke seriously about suffering—though his eyes never stopped smiling.
19. Learn to laugh at your own enlightenment before you achieve it, so when it arrives, you won't make the mistake of taking it seriously.
20. The test of true awakening: if you cannot laugh at yourself, your God, your practice, your achievements, and this very sentence, you are still carrying unnecessary weight.
21. So here is your practice—find your enlightenment laugh right now, the one that knows you never left paradise, that sees through the cosmic game, that recognizes the divine comedy: it sounds like the giggle of a child who just discovered their own toes, combined with the belly laugh of an old sage who finally got the joke, mixed with the silent thunder of the universe chuckling at its own existence—can you hear it? It's been laughing inside you all along, waiting for you to join in.
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