In china there were three mystics....no one knew their names because they never told their names to anyone. IF people ever asked them, all three would start laughing loudly. So slowly, slowly, people started calling them the laughing saints. That became what they were called. And whenever someone asked them about their names, they would say, " we ourselves dont know. And we find it very funny that you all have names. this really makes us laugh a lot because no one can have a name. A name is given to you; when you are born we all came without a name and then we depart without a name."
So all three would laugh and say, " we are surprised! we do not have names, but every body else in the world has a name - this amazes us." And the three would laugh. They would go to al village and people would ask them to give a discourse. They would reply, " discourses have a deadness to them somewhere. There is a heaviness to them. We only know how to laugh; we dont know anything else. "
They would go and stand in the village square and laugh. There laughter would become infectious, the village folks would gatheer and one of them would catch the laughter ..... this way, laughter would take over the entire crowd. Then they would stay in the village for a few days and the whole village would become filled with flowers and laughter.
Then one of t hem died. The people of the village thought, now they must be feeling sad. Rushing to the mystics place, they fournd the other two holding the hands and feet of the dead mystic, swinging his body and laughing. People said, " You mad fellows, what are you doing? we heard that this fellow is dead - and you are laughing? "
The mystics replied, " For one who has laughed all his life, his death too becomes a joke."
Actually, only the death of a man who has been crying all his life becomes a lamentation. Death is nothing but the ultimate culmination: it is the culmination of what ever we have been in our life. If death appears to be very bad, darkness, the reason is not that it is darkness. It is that since childhood we have been living in darkness. All our lives have been in darkness, so that final fruit also appears to be darkness.
They said, " We are feeling very happy. We are shaking this fellow because we want to tell him that he has cheated us. We had decided that one of us could be leaving first, but he has gone ahead of us. If he had given us some hint last night that he was leaving, then we would have gone before him. But he never told us anything, he just quietly left. "
The people said, " Still he is dead and you should not laugh and celebrate like this. It does not look nice. If you cannot cry, atleast you should remain quiet. "
Those two fellow said, " there is no such thing as keeping quiet. Man either laughs or he cries, there is no such thing as staying in the middle."
There really is no middle place between the two. You either laugh or you cry, there is no place in the middle. You either feel happy or sad; there is no place in between. And if you are not happy, than know that you are sad. If you are unable to laugh, then know that you are filled with tears inside, they lie heavily inside you.
The two mystics started to carry the dead body of the third mystic to cremation ground. the whole village was sad, but the two of them were laughing . Reaching the cremation ground, the lit the funeral pyre. The villagers said, " You friend's clothes need to changed, as is the custom of our village."
The monks replied, " No. he told us earlier that when he dies, his clothes should not be changed. He wished to be creamated in the same clothes that he was wearing at the time of his death. We have to honor his wish."
So he was placed on the pyre in the set of clothes. And then slowly slowly laughter started tp spread because the man had filled his clothes with fire crackers before dying. When, one by one, the fire crackers started going off, the whole village slowly slowly started to laugh and they said, what a strange man! he is dead but he is still making us laugh, all though inside we feel like crying. All these fire crackers going off from his dead body .....! what a man he is, he even laughs at death, he has made his death also into a joke."
For a man who has been laughing all his life, death also becomes a matter of laughter. But we cry all our lives. We have been educated in crying. We have been initiated into crying. From his very childhood, we prepare every child for crying, and not for laughing. We stop the spring of his laughter from all sides. We block his joy from all sides. than it is not surprising if he starts making others suffer. This is one of the causes behind the whole of mankind hanging on the cross. But we do not have any idea of what we are doing and how small things are going to have an effect later on in life.
