My guru, Chogyam Trungpa, used to talk about how important it is to have a sense of humor when practicing on the spiritual path. The spiritual path, incidentally, includes all of life. To practice spirituality, a person is required to breath. Besides that, spiritual practice includes eating. It includes brushing teeth. It includes using the toilet. Getting dressed. Reading. Writing. Having sex. Going for a swim. You name it. I am sitting in front of my computer, typing this blog. I am doing my spiritual practice.

If one is unable to laugh at the craziness which comes up all of the time, one will surely be dead in the water. By dead in the water, I mean hopelessly miserable. Sunk in despair, so that one is unable to ever emerge.

The opposite of laughing is crying. If you cry all of the time, someone may decide you are very depressed, and they may telephone 911 on your behalf. On the other hand, though, if you laugh all of the time, somebody else may decide you are totally manic. You are "off your rocker." They may also telephone 911 on your behalf. Karma is karma, as the saying goes. In that sense, it matters not whether you laugh or cry. If someone is going to call 911 "in order to help you," they will do it whether you laugh or you cry. Therefore - and here is my main point or my thesis statement, as we used to call it in undergraduate composition classes - you might as well live in such a way that will garner you the most happiness. You might as well be as free and authentic and as joyful and spontaneous as you can. Playing it safe does nothing to protect you at all. There is no way to be safe from the insanity, which is all around us (in case you haven't noticed it). That insanity includes a whole bunch of people who quickly notice that other people are out of their minds, but never notice their own craziness or think they are "one of those insane others." They are the ones who click their tongues at non-conformity and define any vision of the world which differs from their own as psychopathology, and they in the majority. As we say in democratic America, "majority rules."

I heard a story about something that took place shortly after the Chinese Communists annexed Tibet by force, in total contempt of the world's rules about playing fair, knowing full well that the world would do nothing to enforce those rules of fairness, which are meaningless words that have nothing whatsoever to do with behavior. We all know how to talk a good talk, right? At that time, there was an old lama who used to come to a certain lake where many dakinis (female goddesses) lived, and he sat down on the same rock every morning and conversed with them. He had been visiting the dakinis there every morning for many years, enjoying the chat and learning from whatever the dakinis shared with him. Some Communist officials saw him chatting with the dakinis, and they explained to him very patiently and kindly that there was really no such being. "They are only in your mind," they told him, and they warned him to not return there any more or they would stop him by force. Of course, foolish man that he was (the same type of idiot that I am), he kept returning there every day in spite of their warnings. Finally, they took him away, not in a police car, of course (he had committed no crime), but in an ambulance. After all, they had his best interests in mind. They only wanted to help him.

He never returned. What a big surprise!

Since karma is karma, you might as well follow your heart. In my e-book, Four Ghosts in a Mad House, there is a true story about a not very attractive woman who is getting sent to the State Hospital. She doesn't want to go, so she demands a court hearing. The night before her hearing, she paces up and down the corridor of Bellevue's Women's Psych Ward wearing a bikini. She has decided to wear this to court the next day, because she looks so gorgeous in it, she thinks. She tells everyone who is looking at her, "I'll knock the judge's eyes out wearing this!"

I had to include that story in the book because it was sitting in my heart. I was on that ward more than forty years ago, and it was all horrible, but it would have been much worse were it not for the flip side of everything, which was the aspect of it all which was hysterically funny. The ability to laugh was and still is my good friend. It comforts me in situations where I might otherwise be frozen with terror or overwhelmed with grief or consumed by rage. It shows me the emptiness in situations. What I mean by that is that humor pokes holes in everything. It takes what seems like thick, solid, impenetrable prison walls of misery - or impossible hopelessness - and drills little holes in those walls. It drills the holes with laughter.

Maybe laughter was the weapon used by Joshua at the Battle of Jericho, when the walls came tumbling down. Joshua looked at the wall that everybody else was so freaked out about, and it was such a nothing to him that he just started to laugh. He laughed so much that he drilled millions of little holes in that wall with his laughter. Those millions of holes entirely destroyed the structure of the wall, causing it to tumble.

My father-guru, Chogyam Trungpa, was referred to as the Dorje Dradul, the great, invincible general. He's been teaching me his battle strategies. When all seems lost, there is always the weapon of laughter.

A sense of humor is necessary on the spiritual path. Now I will end this blog here and take the rest of today off. I intend to head to the beach where I will enjoy wearing my new swimsuit. You never know what the future holds; maybe I'll meet somebody outrageous and knock his eyes out with the swimsuit!

If you read my book, you'll also know why I end here today with the word "Sayonara."

Sayonara.