Laughter

A Chinese parable

Laughter has such a transforming power that often nothing else is needed! If you could replace desperation with celebration, then you would be able to transform death into rebirth.

Once there were three Chinese mystics, whose real name remains unknown to these days; people simply called them the "Three laughing saints", because they did nothing else but laugh. They walked from one place to another and, stopping at market places, they simply laughed.

These, indeed, were three very distinguished people: they laughed and they stomachs swayed in such an infectious way that the all market would start laughing. In a split moment, merriment would spread around at the speed of lightening, so that in just a few seconds, a whole new world would come to life.  This is how, although when they came into a market, everyone around was sad, irritated, envious, greedy, tired, in a fighting mood or busy trading, suddenly everything would change and people would start laughing together with them.

Many people even understood that this had a changing power and that they could do the same.

The laughing saints wandered everywhere in China, from village to village, simply helping people to laugh.

Then, one day, during their visit to one village, one of them died. The inhabitants of the village said:

“Now they will not laugh anymore; their friend died, they surely will mourn him.”

Contrary to expectations, however, the other two laughed and celebrated death.  

The locals commented:

“This is a bit too much!!!  This is not on! This kind of thing is unheard of! It is mockery to laugh and dance when someone dies!”

At this the two laughing men answered:

“Don’t you understand what happen? We always use to try and guess who would die first, so now, you see, he won the bet and we lost it. We spent our whole life laughing with him and we surely cannot bid farewell to him by doing anything different. How else we can say good bye to him? We laugh, are glad and celebrate! This is the only possible way to part with a man, who laughed whole his life. If we did not laugh, he will laugh from above and think:

     “Fools! They have once more fallen into a trap!!!"

We do not see him as dead: how can laughter die, how can life die?”

The corpse, however, had to be burnt, so the locals  said:

“You must wash it according to our customary rituals.”

At this he two answered that their friend had expressed the wish that the ritual should not be followed,  that he should no be washed, that his clothes should not be changed, that he should be placed on the funerary platform as he was.  Therefore, they had no choice but that of carrying out his wishes.  

And then the unexpected happened….

As soon as they had placed the corpse on the fire and people had started to mourn the old man’s last joke, all sorts of fiery popguns and fireworks that he had hidden under his clothes started to explode, burst and sparkle, providing a vivid and colourful spectacle!!  

At this, his two mad friends burst into a dance and with them danced all the people of the village, laughing ‘till tears run down their cheeks.