Love and Happiness: Listen to the Cosmic Laughter

By SADHU VISHWAMURTIDAS

The funny thing about life is that there usually isn't much to laugh about!

"I'm not very happy most of the time," quipped Woody Allen. "The rest of the time I'm not happy at all."

On television, the joke is on someone else, so we laugh. Someone else's slip-up, struggles, loss of face, sleepless nights. In real life, however, the joke is usually on us. Maybe comedies bring us relief from our own frustrations and failures by drawing our attention to the fictional disasters of others. Or is it that we get to view a reflection of ourselves in those characters on the screen and so present a disguised opportunity to see the humorous angle of what happens to all of us; a form of catharsis; a chance to unwind and ease the tension of our troubled minds?

Laughter, however, is not unique to human beings. Monkeys do it all the time! But scientific research using sensitive instruments reveal that even mice laugh when turned upside down and tickled on their bellies! And though many scientists refute it, many people swear that they have seen their pets - be it dog, cat or cow - cry when the animals sensed that something sad had happened in the household. So it seems that animals who laugh can cry, too. With or without the tears, animals certainly experience despondency like we humans do. Some years ago in the US, two lifetime lovers and companions, Charlie and Josephine, were together when Charlie was shot dead in full sight of Josephine by the police after Charlie had become uncontrollable. Josephine collapsed on her knees and lay her head on Charlie's lifeless body, never to rise again. She had not been shot or wounded in any way. Her injuries were psychological. The loss of Charlie was too much for her to bear. Her heart stopped beating and her lungs stopped breathing. The amazing thing was, Charlie and Josephine were not human beings but a pair of llamas who had escaped from a zoo during a storm.

Man is not much different from his fellow animals. Comparison of the human genome with mice and monkeys in particular, have shown that our DNA is surprisingly similar to theirs. In fact, we share 98-99 per cent of our DNA with them. It is a humbling discovery. We have shed the fur and the tail, it seems, but not much else. The joke is certainly on us. Observe the world around you. Most people are not happy. Nearly all of us are lamenting. And over what? Too much money or too little of it; too much fame or too little of it; too much isolation or too little of it.

People have a roof over their heads, clothes to put on their bodies and food enough to fill their stomachs. Yet they want more. Like the peasant farmer in Leo Tolstoy's famous story, How Much Land Does A Man Need? people continue to ‘run' in an attempt to gather as much land as they can before the sun sets. Tolstoy's farmer collapsed and died of over-exertion upon returning to collect his accumulated land. He neither acquired the extra land he craved for, nor did he enjoy the land he already possessed.

Kabir said: "I feel amused when I see fish thirsting in the sea." All the avatars and great saints of yore have found the human condition amusing. Theirs is a laughter of cosmic proportions; of a magnitude so large that our whining and weeping seem irrelevant and trivial.

The person who ‘hears' this cosmic laughter suddenly awakes. He stops crying, wipes his tears and looks around curiously to see what's so funny. When he realises the truth he finds life funny as well.

So stop weeping and listen to that cosmic laughter. See the funny side. And laugh your heart out.

(www.swaminarayan.org )

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See also: Love and Happiness, Life and Beyond, Death and Dying, Body Mind and Soul)