Stupid Buddhist Humor

Stupid Buddhist (or in my case, specifically Zen) humor is a unique subgenre of hilarity that amuses me to no end but I find impossible to explain.  Inability to explain anything hasn't ever stopped me from trying though! Ha ha, suckers! This particular topic (like pretty much everything else I'll ever be talking about on this blog) has been in my consciousness for quite some time, and I made reference to it on Twitter, but decided it needed a longer explanation.
The Dalai Lama has a Twitter account which is just about the best thing EVER. Given that he frikin' loves technology I have no doubt that most of the time it's actually him tweeting his random thoughts of awesomeness like, "Compassion and love are not a luxury. As the source both of inner and external peace, they are fundamental to the survival of our species." However, he occasionally posts links to videos of his talks or visits & the summaries thereof have obviously been prepped by a PR team (because he doesn't seem the sort to refer to himself in the third person). The point is, these posts always refer to him as HHDL. I can't explain why the fuck I find this so friggin' hilarious, but I do. I really really do. In case you're not familiar with the forms, his official title is 'His Holiness the Dalai Lama', which I recognize is entirely too long for Twitter. Even 'His Holiness' is too long. There's just something funny about his title being turned into an acronym in order to accommodate a society (and consequently a technology) obsessed with briefness. My mom also found this fact hilarious, but I strongly suspect it's one more instance of shit that Buddhists find funny that quite possibly no one else will.
Other examples include the ever classic book The Life and Letters of Tofu Roshi by Susan Moon. There is a section extremely reminiscent of "Letters from the Pet Department" in A Thurber Carnival by James Thurber (a book that is sure to have its own blog entry someday) with quality letters to Tofu Roshi asking questions like, "Every time I sit down to meditate, the song Found a Peanut pops into my head. Is there any hope for me?" and another concerning a dog who won't meditate and whether it's acceptable to just tie him to the Zafu for 40 minutes a day. The former is funny because it's true. The epically annoying shit your brain will dredge up during zazen is incredible, not least because the entire time you're trying to clear your mind of everything and that one damn song just WON'T GO AWAY. The question about the dog...well...this is one of those points where I can't even begin to tell you why I find it so funny. 
I'm sure I'll come back to this topic again someday, but for now I'll stop while I'm ahead (read: haven't deleted my entire blog post accidentally) and go do some productive shit like clean the kitchen and go pick up my car from the garage. 


The real irony of this post is that I'm so paranoid about this entire blogging thing that in all likelihood, no one will actually read any of this so once again I'm attempting to explain shit to a non-existence audience! I'm kind of digging this. Maybe I'll just let knowledge of this thing seep out in a natural ooztastic interwebs fashion. I just realized this also gives me a platform to debut my Interwebs-exploding art piece that I will someday unveil. 


Be Seeing You.