Riffing On The Cosmic Joke

The role of humor and laughter in the tragedy and comedy of being human.

What did the monk say to the hot dog vendor?”

“Make me one with everything.”

So, why do we laugh and why is it important?

While there are many theories of humor ranging from antiquity’s superiority theory, Freud’s relief theory, and the widely accepted incongruity theory, there is also a modern take dubbed the benign violation theory.

In a nutshell, superiority theory is the stance that laughter is primarily derisive to scorn or mock others, while relief theory suggests laughter’s function is around resolving nervous tension around taboo subjects. Incongruity theory suggests humor arises when situations arise at odds with our expectations, while benign violation theory hits the sweet spot between harmless and transgressive to worldviews.

Other ideas around the role of laughter include the expression of joy and bringing lightness to the heaviness of life – the adage “laughter is the best medicine” begs the question – medicine for what? Seriousness, misery, misfortune, worries and garden variety existential angst seem to qualify in my books. From an evolutionary psychology perspective, humor encapsulates many desirable qualities – wit (intelligence plus speed and agility), courage to take the emotional risk that a joke may fall flat, broach difficult topics or to speak truth to power, social bonding and cohesion, and the power to elevate one’s status or lower another’s. 

I contend that paradox is at the root of humor – the resolution of seeming opposites that confound the rational faculties. As Keith Critchlow, an architect and teacher of sacred geometry says, “The divine is in the diagonal.”

My favorite joke is the cosmic joke, though it seems a blend of tragedy and comedy. Indeed, self-deprecation is common enough while there is something primal about taking joy in the misery of others, as the German word schadenfreude signifies. 

So, what is it?

It’s a kind of “inside” joke though once grokked, the concept of inside and outside doesn’t really apply.

For example, the spiritual seeker that travels around the world on a great quest in search of teachers looking to become one with the universe finds out he or she already was. The irony of a decades-long quest in order to discover that which was always already the case. And the further irony that the adventure was necessary in order to see it, thus redeeming the seeming futility of it all.

The punchline is so utterly simple, so utterly obvious, that most overlook it everyday and in nearly every moment without incident and provokes a response befitting the Miles Davis tune from Kind Of Blue, “So What?”

As one Zen master said upon his awakening, "Enlightenment was the single greatest disappointment of my life."

In my opinion, one of the most pithy summaries of the cosmic joke is attributed to St. Francis of Assisi: “The one you are looking for is the one that is looking.”

An excellent explanation of the ramifications of simple direct experience comes through the work of Douglas Harding. Though On Having No Head: Zen And The Rediscovery Of The Obvious, was his most popular, his first work was The Hierarchy Of Heaven And Earth, a comprehensive exploration of scales of perspective and layers of identity in response to the inquiry and riddle of the ages, “Who Am I?”¹

In a way, Harding offers a “science of the first person.”

“View From Left Eye” - Public Domain

I’ll invite you to suspend whatever your beliefs are for a moment to paint a hypothetical picture.

Let’s begin with an infinite universe comprising hundreds of billions of galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars and light-years of empty space within and in-between. Next, let’s compress it into the single cell of a zygote, itself a union between sperm and ovum. This same universe, eternal² – with neither beginning nor end³, gives rise to human life that lasts about 80 years or so, terminal disease, accident or harm notwithstanding.

One of the first images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.

What is the one quality lacking from that which is infinite and eternal, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent?

Limitation is at the heart of the cosmic joke.

Mortal and limited, vulnerable, ignorant, and confined to frail bodies totally dependent on their caretakers and environment, is there an organism more helpless than a human infant?

As the Genie quips in Disney’s Aladdin, “phenomenal cosmic powers – itty, bitty living space.”

And yet these very same babes grow to become the most remarkable figures that weave the tapestry of culture and history – the geniuses of the arts and sciences, merchants, athletes, soldiers, rulers, mystics, saints and sages. And no matter how rich, powerful or famous, disease, aging and death inevitably come for us all. Misfortune and loss are profoundly egalitarian in that way.

And somehow, even in the midst of this profound limitation, it is somehow possible for this human organism to transcend its conditions, glimpse and even abide in the utterly ineffable mystery of the cosmos. Religions and cultures have been shaped by the realizations of these vanishingly rare few.

This strikes me as a mirthful situation.

Nisargadatta Maharaj economically summarizes the above scenario:

“Wisdom is knowing I am nothing,

Love is knowing I am everything,

And between the two my life moves."

And now, time for another joke.

“What did one monk say to the other?”

“Nothing.”

Something I find particularly humorous in the spirit of the cosmic joke is Fred Davis’s Four Ignoble Truths, an irreverent and complementary take on Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths.

The Four Noble Truths go something like this: 

• First, dissatisfaction is intrinsic to life. 

• Second, this dissatisfaction has a cause – craving. 

• Third, there is an end to this dissatisfaction.

• Fourth, there is a path to that end, the Noble Eightfold Path.

Here are Fred Davis’s Four Ignoble Truths.

1. We make stuff up.

2. We believe the stuff we make up.

3. We suffer because we believe the stuff we make up.

4. We turn to spirituality only once we’re tired of suffering.

I’ll close with one more joke.

When the monk forked over a $20 bill, the hot dog vendor didn’t give him back anything. The monk said, “Where’s my change?” The hot dog vendor replied, “Real change comes from within.”

1. I touch on this in more depth here.

2. 13.7 billion years since the Big Bang, though that begs the question what came before? Furthermore, what does a year even mean before there was a sun and this earth to orbit around it?

3. Though there are definitely beginnings and endings.