Does Comedy Give us Access to Buddha Nature?

I am going to get waaaaaay in over my head here. Y'all should know, I'm no Buddhist scholar, I'm just a guy who reads a lot of books and sits on a cushion every day. Lately, I've been thinking about comedy and compassion, and how they're related. At age eight, I spent countless hours repeating Steve Martin routines, getting the inflection just right:

He kept wanting her to sing... from her diaphragm. [wait for laughs]
I mean, that would take years to learn that, wouldn't it?

Take a look at this video from Funnyordie.com. Full disclosure: June Diane Raphael who appears in the video is a client.

Death Panel Advisors - watch more funny videos

So here we are in the world, having this big nationwide healthcare debate, and people are pissed. And the thing is, each one of them believes he or she is right. Remember: whatever you think is a 100% incontrovertible fact ain't necessarily so. Someone else has a completely different opinion, and to them, it's a hard fact.

Lama Marut has a great way of showing this to us. He gives a lesson in this video about deceptive reality vs. ultimate reality.


The lesson consists of Lama Marut showing his students a pen, and pointing out that all the things we usually think about a pen ain't necessarily so. To a casual viewer, the pen seems fairly permanent, but under a microscope, it's changing in every nanosecond. To a dog, it might appear as a chew toy. Marut says, "Is the dog wrong to see this object as a chew toy? Not from the dog's point of view."

The "death panels" video takes something that someone actually might believe, and showing the absurdity of it. It's giving access to a different point-of-view through comedy. You might believe that death panels will come after your grandparents, and after watching this video, you might rethink your point-of-view. And you might laugh at anyone who believes there could be a such thing as a death panel, but after watching this, you might understand another's fear of it. I'm not saying the people who created the video intended this, I'm just saying it's possible.

So here's where buddha nature come in. All you Buddhist scholars out there, please feel free to correct me where you think I'm missing something. Here's Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche's explanation of buddha nature from his book Joyful Wisdom.

"It's not a characteristic exclusive to the historical Buddha or to Buddhist practitioners. It's not something created or imagined. It's the heart or essence inherent in all living beings, an unlimited potential to do, hear, or experience anything. Because of buddha nature we can learn, we can grow, we can change. We can become buddhas in our own right.... [the Buddha] described it... in terms of three qualities.. boundless wisdom... infinite capability... and immeasurable loving-kindness and compassion––a limitless sense of relatedness to all creatures, an open-heartedness toward others that serves as a motivation to create the conditions that enable all beings to flourish."

Rinpoche talks about Buddha Nature Blockers, which he says are, "cognitive structures that lock us into a limited and limiting view of ourselves, others, and the world around us.... that inhibit us from experiencing our lives with a deep awareness of freedom, clarity, wisdom, and wonder that transcends the conventional psychotherapeutic model of simply becoming okay, well-adjusted, or normal."

The second Blocker, he says, is "a critical view of others" which can show up in different ways, including the "point of view that everyone is less important, less competent, or less deserving than oneself..." or, "a tendency to blame others for the challenges we experience." And the fifth Blocker is "traditionally interpreted as self-obsession... We cling to our opinions, our storylines, our personal mythologies, with the same desperation with which we hold to the sides of a roller coaster cart."

So comedy, then, can give us respite from these Blockers. When we're laughing at the prospect that bureaucrats might come for an elderly couple, we know this is an extrapolation of someone's actual experience. Who hasn't heard of an insurance claim denied? Suddenly we're laughing, and we're also understanding that someone else being afraid doesn't mean they're stupid or wrong. They're just afraid.

And perhaps if we're convinced that liberal bureaucrats are out to get us, that they want to kill our grandparents to save on healthcare costs, laughing might allow us to let go of our storyline, our personal mythology, for just long enough to see something through a different lens. To see a pen, just possibly, as a chew toy.
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Does Comedy Give us Access to Buddha Nature?

Movies as Meditation - Keith Nobbs on cultivating compassion by watching Sean Penn - "You get goosebumps! Your body knows when it's real!"

Here's the truth, and it hurts. Bad. Sometimes I wonder whether this is all just an intellectual exercise. Not that often, but sometimes. I mean, does it really mean anything to anyone, when an actor approaches a role with compassion? Whether he or she really tries to portray them as a human being, without judgment? I mean, Transformers made over $200M this weekend! In spite of its astoundingly bad reviews. Shouldn't we all be emulating that?

But then there are times where a performance deeply affects us, and gives us insight into a human being in a completely new way. No, I'm not talking about Megan Fox. Keith Nobbs, who recently shared his thoughts on contribution with us, and whose own work has deeply affected many, talked to me about watching Sean Penn in Dead Man Walking:

You'll have to watch the video to see him describe Penn's performance, and how the briefest crack in his stoic veneer allowed Keith, as an audience member, access to understand the character as a human being. But here's what Keith says about how you know when it's working:

"When that moment happens, it's not an intellectual thing, it's an emotional engagement. You get goosebumps! Your body knows when it's real... you're completely invested in that feeling... watching people crack... just gets me every time."

Who hasn't felt that way, watching an amazing performance that connects to them personally in an unexpected way. Sean Penn plays a brutal murderer in the film, and creates someone we're able to see as a human being. And we know it's true, because we feel it in our bones.

It's this point that reminds me it's not just intellectual; it's emotional, it's real, and it compels us to understand other human beings as being no different from ourselves. That the way we suffer is universal, that our struggles are universal.

Keith goes on to point out that it ain't easy!

"It's such a beautiful, vulnerable strength, to be able to do that. And you try, and you try to be compassionate with yourself as an actor when you do that successfully, and when you don't. 'Cause you don't, all the time. Sometimes we mess up. Not mess up, but sometimes you're not able, sometimes you're too scared. But to be forgiving and loving of yourself... and to continue to be curious and to continue to be empathetic.... is the goal."

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, who I was fortunate enough to see recently at the New York Shambhala Center, shares this in his new book, Joyful Wisdom:

"Deeply entrenched in our habits of relating to ourselves, other people, things, and situations is a kind of lonely separateness––a sense of independent being that obscures our connectedness to others. This very subtle sense of difference or separation lies at the heart of many personal and interpersonal problems. The practice of empathy takes whatever difficulty or crisis we may be facing as a starting point for recognizing our similarity to others. It gradually opens our minds to a profound experience of fearlessness and confidence while transforming personal problems into a strong motivation to help others."

The empathy that Keith describes in Sean Penn's performance––the empathy Penn has for his character, which creates the empathy we feel for his character––is this "starting point" for recognizing our similarity, and that's why it gives us goosebumps. Rinpoche goes on to talk about how easy it is not to see this similarity.

"It's so easy to think that we're the only ones who suffer while other people were born with the Happiness Handbook...which through some accident of birth, we never received. I've been as guilty of this belief as anyone else. When I was young, the anxiety I almost constantly experienced left me feeling alone, weak, and stupid."

As I have previously quoted, Thich Nhat Hanh talking about what feeling that way makes us do:

"You can make a mistake only when you forget that the other person suffers. You tend to believe that you are the only one who suffers, and that the other person is enjoying your suffering. You will say and do mean and cruel things when you believe that you are the only one who suffers and that the other person does not suffer at all."

Rinpoche goes on to talk about his compassion mediation and how it affected him:

"I found that my sense of isolation began to diminish. At the same time I gradually began to feel confident and even useful. I began to recognize that I wasn't the only person to feel scared and vulnerable. Over time, I began to see that considering the welfare of other beings was essential in discovering my own peace of mind."

Is it possible that watching a performance grounded in compassion is a form of mediation on compassion, in that it causes us to feel more compassion for others? In the moment we're suddenly able to feel compassion for Sean Penn's character, a murderer who we might otherwise judge, is compassion being cultivated within us?

And maybe we only feel that way for a moment, and maybe the compassion fades. But guess what? Same thing with meditation! People practice Tonglen over and over and over for years. The Dalai Lama supposedly practices it every day! I mean, that dude seems pretty compassionate to me and still he feels like he needs to keep practicing. I hope he gets it right at some point.

Seriously though, I'm not suggesting that anyone give up compassion and lovingkindness meditation and start watching movies. But it's clear that watching a performance grounded in compassion opens us up to an understanding of our similarity to others. Including, perhaps, giant robots.

Thanks so much, Keith, for bringing the importance of this to my attention! *

Movies as Meditation - Keith Nobbs on cultivating compassion by watching Sean Penn - "You get goosebumps! Your body knows when it's real!"