How to die laughing;Jada Pinkett and Will Smith refused enlightenment and chose anger
I want you to take a second and look back at the worst memory of your life. This memory may have caused you a lifetime of anxiety or mental health issues. Perhaps it has changed your perception of life for the worse. For a few seconds suspend all judgments and emotions attached to this memory…Now imagine how much more powerful and easy-going life would be if you found the humor in this moment? An immediate feeling of release will more than likely come over you, a weight off your shoulders. The emotional weight of our negative thoughts weighs more than we can imagine. After years of carrying this unnecessary baggage, it is refreshing to learn that humor and a different perspective can change everything. Had Jada Pinkett and Will Smith practiced this very technique they may have reached a form of enlightenment. Instead like the majority of the population, they chose anger.
The man who says his wife can’t take a joke, forgets that she took him.
Author: Oscar Wilde
There is a story of a person who died laughing in the Buddhist tradition. A simple village person asked a teacher the color of Amitabha, which is red. The village person mistakenly assumed that his teacher said it was the color of ash in a fire calling it grey Amitabha. The village person would use this to influence his entire meditation practice for the rest of his life, until on his death bed..As the simple village person was dying he asked another teacher the color of Amitabha. The teacher told him it was red. The simple village person began laughing and told him he thought he was the color of ash and now on his deathbed he found out it’s red. The village person continue laughing and shortly thereafter died laughing. Perhaps our intelligence in life is overcoming seriousness..
What you can’t take a joke? Do we even know where the line is anymore before we cross it and offend people? If comedy is an artform how do we define what is truly offensive if it is subjective? Just using this much thought alone defeats the purpose of comedy. It’s supposed to make us forget about the real world while teaching us about it. Comedy can be the best form of transforming information because it brings laughter to our souls. If we’re judging whether a joke was too offensive or not we’re completely missing the point. The role of the court jesters has taken a medieval role of importance today.
In the past, we’ve touched on the importance of court jesters flavor flav and Jr. smith. Today we add Chris Rock to that list. Rock has never been one to shy away from social commentary in his jokes which makes it even more important to protect his role as a comedian. Ridicule, bullying, shame, and embarrassment are all things we deal with at some point in our lives. However the more we embrace them the close we become to being able to deal with life and achieve enlightenment.
“Honesty is a very expensive gift, don’t expect it from cheap people”
-Warren Buffett
Honesty and facts don’t care about our feelings and that is a good thing. Otherwise how hard would it be to learn the truth if it changed based on how we feel at the moment? Not only did Jada Pinkett and Will Smith miss a chance to find the irony and humor in Chris rock’s joke. But Chris rock displayed perhaps a moment of enlightenment himself. After being slapped in front of the entire world and millions of people, Rock kept his composure. Not only that, but he made a joke about it. Rather than obsess about the embarrassment of being smacked at the Oscars he actually found the irony and humor. That takes humility, humbleness, and wit. How many of us could see the humor if we were in Rock’s shoes at that moment?. The very same thing that makes you laugh can make you cry. Being too serious is actually funny and being too funny is actually serious. But there is the middle path, were not supposed to be caught in extremes of feeling this way or another.
When we come to understand that we are all both good and bad, light and dark, strong and weak, brilliant and oftentimes utterly stupid, we begin the profound process of healing the internal split that invariably takes place for most of us at some time in our lives. This is the only path I’ve found that actually relieves human suffering
Debbie Ford-Why good people do bad things
Perhaps Jada Pinkett and Will Smith are too caught up in appearing “good”. Maybe will hasn’t learned how to channel his aggression properly. Furthermore, Smith should learn to protect his own mental health first before protecting his wife. After all, what good are we protecting others if we can’t protect ourselves?. The problem we have is that we try to appear strong when we’re weak rather than embracing our weakness and developing it. It’s not that the majority of jokes are offensive, but we find them offensive because of how we feel about ourselves. If we’re fat and found the humor in fat jokes it takes away from being too serious about being fat. If we think being fat is too serious for anyone to joke about, more than likely we will end up staying fat. All of our energy is being focused on it and we are carrying it emotionally.
“Whatever we do is constantly being watched and censored. Actually, it is not Big brother who is watching; it is big ME!. Another aspect of me is watching me, behind me, just about to strike, just about to pinpoint my failure, There is no joy in this approach no sense of humor at all.
Chogyam Trungpa-Buddhist
Let’s take the spirituality away from comedy for a second. There are even studies showing how laughter leads to learning. A 22-page study from 1969-2000 found that while humor works it must be attuned to the student’s knowledge to “enhance student’s attention, improve the classroom environment or lower students tests anxieties”
In conclusion, “there are many stories of people who were actually able to see the awakened state by breaking into laughter- seeing the contrast, the irony of polar situations”. What we could learn from Jada Pinkett and Will Smith is that obsessing over maintaining an image and status quo could prove detrimental. Being too rigid and serious takes the joy out of life. Embracing how “bad” emotions but not acting on them is a life lesson we all can learn. And that’s no joke..