Lessons From a Comedian – and Buddhism

I recently had the privilege of meeting a Japanese woman who is a stand-up comedian. When I was introduced to her, I thought, “Huh?  A woman from Japan who is a stand-up comedian?  How fascinating.”  

Her name is Michelle MaliZaki and you can find some of her stand-up comedy on the internet. I hope she becomes a big success.

One of her jokes is about being married to a rocket scientist: “I’m married to a white rocket scientist,” she says. “He doesn’t talk! For communication, we exchange pie charts.” 

I asked her how she comes up with new material for her comedy and she said that she basically takes it from everyday life. I shared with her how I also try to draw my Dharma messages from everyday life as well.  

When I think of some of my favorite comedians, they all relate comedy to everyday life. Jerry Seinfeld is probably the most famous for that. “Seinfeld,” his hit show that we used to watch was, as he touted, about “nothing,” meaning the show centered around some kind of everyday life occurrence for Jerry and his friends, Elaine, George and Kramer.  

Remember the show about them waiting for a table at a Chinese restaurant? We could all relate to that show because we have all experienced something like that.  

Having a sense of humor is so important in life. Laughing is very healthy. It is important in Buddhism as well. We have to be able to laugh at ourselves, at our own foolishness, at our own ego self, as we are shown it, as a reflection of the teachings. 

We look around the house for our glasses and find that they are on top of our heads the whole time. We can’t find our favorite baseball cap and begin to blame our family members for moving it and come to realize we left it in the car. On and on and on, we find things to laugh about ourselves in our daily life. When we see other people do stupid or foolish things, it makes us laugh, but really, the only reason we can see that in others is because it exists in ourselves.  

Rev. Haya Akegarasu, in his writings, once mentioned that he was with a group of ministers and they were all complaining that their orei or honorariums were too small. He told them that the reason why they saw their orei as small is because they were tight with money themselves. If we ourselves weren’t tight, we wouldn’t be able to see it in others.  

We can see others as greedy because greed exists in us. We see anger in others because we have anger within us, too. Of course, we see others lose control of their anger in ways that we would never do, but even at that, sometimes we can’t see ourselves when we get that angry.  

I remember once when my children were small, I was scolding them about something. The bathroom mirror was just at the right angle and I caught an image of myself being angry. It was an ugly sight. Is that what I look like when I get mad? Oh, my gosh.  

Seeing ourselves can be funny or it can be painful as well. Shinran Shonin saw deeply into himself and saw the depth of his ego, but at the same time, he saw the depth of the Dharma. He found that it was only because of the light of the Dharma that he was able to see the depth of his ego.

I think that seeing the humorous side of our foolishness is the beginning of seeing ourselves at greater depth. Rather than being offended or angered when we are made to see a foolish side of ourselves, we should just laugh instead.  

Going to see a stand-up comedian could be not only entertaining, but it could be a chance to laugh at the foolishness of ourselves.