Article
She Who Laughs Loudest: A Meditation on Zen Humor
Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective
Disciplines
Publication Date
3-1-2015
Abstract
Articulating a Zen Buddhist perspective on humor, this paper examines the Japanese Zen Buddhist response of humor in the face of the suffering of situated existence and the motivations for this response. The examination will take the school of Rinzai Zen Buddhism as its exemplar. I argue that in order to appreciate the function of humor in Zen a number of cultural and historical influences must be considered: correlative ontology; the Buddhist notion of emptiness; the impotence of language; sense and nonsense; and the senselessness of transgression.
Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Citation Information
Andrew Whitehead. "She Who Laughs Loudest: A Meditation on Zen Humor" (2015) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/andrew-k-whitehead/2/