Saw this explanation of "writing funny" from The Dilbert Blog.

Made me wonder - how well do spirituality and being funny go together?  If "being funny" is a skill - and thus has it's own line of development - can you be 2nd tier funny?  Enlightened funny?

Dilbert points out six essential elements of humor:

Clever
Cute
Bizarre
Cruel
Naughty
Recognizable


The cute, cruel and bizarre elements - a bunny with a bazooka, is the example.   Not really apropos for spiritual discussion. (Prove me wrong here - someone write a deeply wise spiritual story about a bunny and a bazooka!  Please?)

Most of the spiritual teachers I have met actually are good-hearted people who love laughing.  But they weren't really that funny - cute and clever, at the best.

But the rip-roaring comedy seems to stem from two parts smart-@ss, mixed with the elements above.

And smart-@ssery isn't usually a very spiritual thing - usually it's the 'lesser developed' narcissistic aspects of one's personality that is the smart'@ass. 

Stuart Davis seems to be the best representative of 2nd tier smart-@ssery we have so far -and he does it great, in my opinion.  Of course, at the same time, he's a total narcissist exhibitionist.  BUT - tt does seem most of the time though, he manages to be a total narcissistic exhibitionist, while being a fully relational human being and not a complete introvert, despite his claims. (you have to scroll down in this entry, past a lot to get to his frank admittance, but it's worth it, because it's a great blogpost.)

To be fully human, and fully enlightened, I do think "true" humor (not the fake stuff/fake laughs we do to paper over wounds) is one of the most valuable gifts we get from others, and one of the most integral/whole.