The Birds, Buddha and a Flower

On the importance of laughter

Somewhere, an enormous stadium-sized flock of birds is laughing. “Return to one-ness?” they ask. “How can one return to one-ness when it is impossible to be separate from it?” The birds live their entire lives in one-ness and have no concept of separation, so they laugh.

Those goofy humans, however, have created a perception of separation and this has given them an opportunity to see one-ness from the perspective of learning what one-ness is not. While the birdies live in one-ness, as that is all they know, the goofy humans have expanded their awareness of that one-ness — or at least moved into a possibility of expanding their awareness of that one-ness. They stopped living in one-ness in order to expand their awareness beyond simply living in one-ness. They will eventually return to living in one-ness but they will have a new awareness of it when they do. Through the humans, one-ness will have a new awareness of itself. That is when the humans will finally laugh.

Buddha scheduled a talk one day. Many, many disciples came to sit and listen. But the Buddha just sat there holding a flower. An hour passed and then another and the Buddha never uttered a word. The disciples grew restless. Finally, one of the disciples named Mahakashyap began laughing hysterically. The Buddha smiled and handed…