Humor as a Spiritual Practice

10/1/24

A month or so after Kelsey died, my book club gathered on a back yard deck with everyone present, a rarity for a group of women who travel a lot. After filling our plates with food and pouring drinks, we pushed our chairs to the table and settled in for a discussion. They wanted to know how I was doing—and because we’d been meeting for twenty-five years and trusted one another, I explained exactly how I was feeling. As the sun sank toward the horizon, our conversation began to shift. Someone talked about her husband’s death the year before. Another talked about the wounds from her recent divorce. Someone else revealed the difficulties of raising a child with multiple disabilities, and another woman talked about her sorrow in never being able to have a child. As the conversation wove in and out of a variety of losses, we began to laugh—maybe because we recognized that just being alive means experiencing loss, maybe because life contains so many absurdities. We didn’t try to put it into words, we just laughed. And that laughter was pure gold. It didn’t end the nausea or take away the heaviness from my limbs, but oh my god, it felt good!

There are, of course, physiological and emotional reasons why laughing feels good: It causes the inner lining of blood vessels to dilate, increasing blood flow. It releases endorphins that relieve pain and trigger pleasure. It forges a common bond with others. I appreciate the healing aspects of humor, but can it be considered a spiritual practice? Many spiritual leaders think so.

In the days after Kelsey died, a friend gave us a book by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, about the healing power of a smile. As I lay on the couch, attempting to stem my tears, I tried to coax the corners of my mouth upward—but my muscles refused to cooperate. (Now, years later I have no difficulty smiling– thank goodness.) In preparation for this essay, I tried to find that small book but couldn’t locate it, so I read another one by Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Smile (Mindfulness Essentials)[1]. Clearly, because the entire book is about smiling, he thinks it’s important and recommends it as a spiritual practice, often alongside other practices.

“During walking meditation, sitting meditation, kitchen and garden work, all day long, we can practice smiling. At first you may find it difficult to smile, and we have to think about why. Events carry us away and we lose ourselves. A smile can help us regain our sovereignty, our liberty as a human being. Smiling means that we are ourselves, that we are not drowned in forgetfulness.” (p.7)

“You may ask why you should smile when you have no joy. You don’t need joy in order to smile; you can practice mouth yoga, and you’ll feel relief right away. Sometimes joy is the cause of your smile; sometimes your smile is the cause of your joy.” (p.10)

During a week spent together in Dharamsala, India, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama talked about joy, their conversations recorded, edited, and published as The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World[2].  On the first day, they talked about the nature of true joy, on days two and three, they discussed obstacles to joy, and on days four and five, the topic was the eight pillars of joy, one of which is humor. According to the two spiritual leaders, a close relationship exists between humor, humility, and humanity with the three words even sharing common root: humus. “We have to have a sense of humility to be able to laugh at ourselves, and to laugh at ourselves reminds us of our common humanity,” says Archbishop Tutu (p.216). Whenever he was conducting a funeral for someone killed by the police during the years of apartheid in South Africa, he used humor to defuse the anger of the hundreds of people in attendance, thus preventing even more bloodshed.  

At the end of the book, there’s an actual how-to for developing a practice of humor. The first step is to think about one of your lesser faults. (Archbishop Tutu gave the example of his large nose.) The second step is to laugh at yourself. I asked my husband to help me enumerate some of my lesser shortcomings. After a moment’s hesitation he agreed to help, and the list of my faults came together with alarming alacrity. Among them is my uneasiness about arriving anywhere late: I insist on leaving our house long before it’s necessary, ensuring that we almost always arrive at our destination early. If we’re going to a social gathering, I make us wait in the car until the appointed time—because I don’t want to show up too early. My husband did a comedy routine on this idiosyncrasy (i.e., fault)—and both of us laughed, proving that the practice works.

The third and final step of the practice is to laugh at life. During the summer after Kelsey died, I met with another bereaved mom to share stories. Eventually we began talking about how grief had taken charge of our lives. Soon we were laughing, not just chuckling but honest to goodness laughing. Even grief has its absurdities.

The Jewish Talmud tells the story of the first century Babylonian sage, Rabba bar Nahmeini , who began each session of teaching Torah with a joke. He was convinced that humor is conducive to learning. There is much in the Hebrew bible about joy. For example, Psalms 126:5-6 (RSV):

May those who sow in tears

Reap with shouts of joy!

He that goes forth weeping,

Bearing the seed for sowing,

Shall come home with shouts of joy,

Bringing his sheaves with him.

The Kotzker Rebbe, a nineteenth-century Hasidic rabbi in Poland, taught that joy has the ability to release us from our troubles, take us beyond ourselves, and expand our consciousness.

Purim is a Jewish holiday, based on a story in the Book of Esther and devoted to merrymaking. It’s about expected disaster (the annihilation of all the Jews in ancient Persia) followed by a complete reversal of fortune (the Jews are saved, a courageous queen is lauded, and the villain is hung). The surprising turn of events has been observed throughout the ensuing centuries by reading the account of Queen Esther’s bravery, sharing food with the needy, eating and drinking—and a great deal of laughter.

According to various texts, the Prophet Mohammed often told jokes, believing that humor strengthened the bonds between his followers. His jokes were always kind, never meant to embarrass or belittle, and he discouraged lying to make people laugh, “O ye who believe! Let not some men among you laugh at others. . . Nor defame nor be sarcastic to each other, nor call each other by offensive nicknames.” (Qur’an, chapter 49, verse 11)

Humor is an important part of Sufism as exemplified by Hafiz’s poem, “Tripping Over Joy”[3]:

“What is the difference

Between your experience of Existence

And that of a saint?

The saint knows

That the spiritual path

Is a sublime chess game with God

And that the Beloved

Has just made such a Fantastic Move

That the saint is now continually

Tripping over Joy

And bursting out in Laughter

And saying ‘I surrender’

Whereas my dear

I am afraid you still think

You have a thousand serious moves.”

According to Wendy Doniger[4], a scholar of Hinduism, humor is celebrated in the rural villages of India through religious festivals, folktales, and oral traditions. “Tenali Rama and the Goddess Kali” is one such folktale: A sage gives Tenali Rama a mantra that he must chant 36,000 times in order for the goddess Kali to appear and bless him. He does as he’s told but when the goddess finally appears (with 1,000 heads and multiple arms) Rama begins to laugh. Kali asks why he is laughing, and he tells her that he was imagining her with a cold, sneezing with a thousand noses. Kali joins in the laughter.

In addition to an appreciation of humor and laughter, Hinduism emphasizes the development of inner joy.  The Bhagavad Gita (2.65) states, “When one is joyous from within, sorrow reduces drastically, almost disappearing. And such a contented and blissful yogin is able to take his mind off everything, firmly establishing himself in the supreme soul.”

The Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, wrote, “Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God that we possess.” The grace of God, at least as I understand it, is the unconditional love of God that takes us from the ordinary to the extraordinary—just as laughter puts us in touch with something beyond ourselves. While it may seem strange to juxtapose comic books and the grace of God, that’s what comes to mind—probably because I just saw “Cat Kid Comic Club, the Musical” with our six-year-old grandson. The superhero, “Spider Butt” prompted our grandson (and probably all the six and seven-year-olds in the audience) to double up with laughter—and their laughter transported me beyond ordinary existence. I mean really, what is more uplifting than a grandchild’s delighted laughter? I’m seriously thinking of reading comic books as part of my spiritual practice.

One final observation. My husband is a funny guy and often makes me laugh. Over the years, he has helped me gain a greater ability to see the humor in life. It comes naturally to him, and he’s used humor to overcome his bouts of trauma-induced depression. I know he is emerging from an episode when he can joke about it. At those moments, our shared laughter feels like a slice of heaven—and the grace of God.

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[1] Hanh, Thich Nhat (2023). How to Smile (Mindfulness Essentials). Parallax Press: Berkeley, CA

[2] Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso) and Desmond Tutu (2016). The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World. With Douglas Abrams. Avery: New York.

[3] Ladinsky, Daniel (2006). I Heard God Laughing, Poems of Hope and Joy: Renderings of Hafiz. Penguin Books: New York.

[4] Doniger, Wendy (2009). The Hindus: An Alternative History. Penguin: New York.