I was reading this very long academic article...
by MICHEL CLASQUIN, University of South Africa, Social Identities, 2001
.
… and I came across the verse in my illustration above. It struck a chord in me for reasons I am not quite sure of. I didn’t perceive it as I assume it was intended (although perhaps not) as a conversation between two people but rather as an inner dialogue, me speaking to me.
Consider the following duel of words between Chao-chou and his disciple Wen-yuan, in which each tried to outdo the other in identifying with the lowest thing they could imagine. Indeed, humour in Zen Buddhism has been changed from something to be avoided if at all possible to a teaching device in its own right. Time and again we read of Zen monks and their masters laughing uproariously, of revered teachers clowning around, playing the fool, joking even about things ordinarily held sacred by other Buddhists, not excluding the Buddha himself. Again and again we read about a Zen master who ‘clapped his hands and gave a loud roar of laughter’ (Hyers, 1974, p. 33).
Here Zen monks ‘battle’ with each other, trying to outdo each other in series of puns, witticisms and non-sequiturs. Consider the following duel of words between Chao-chou and his disciple Wen-yuan, in which each tried to outdo the other in identifying with the lowest thing they could imagine.
‘I am an ass.’
‘I am the ass’s buttocks.’
‘I am the ass’s faeces.
’‘I am a worm in the faeces.
’‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m on my summer vacation!’
This example of Buddhist humor comes from “Zen and the comic spirit” (1974, pg, 145) by Conad M. Heyers (brief review).
My own background adds another line, only it is of Jewish type humor. It is based on the prospect of the reemergence of Trump like a malevolent phoenix arising from the ashes, watching him jockey for position as leader of the GOP, seeing his sycophants sucking up to him, and in addition to this my watching the obstructionism from from the Republican senators as President Biden tries to get his nominations approved:
‘You call this a vacation?’
I think we know where this fist has been:
Just seeing this face in any context is nauseating, but to see him participating in the Senate hearing on the riot as if he wasn’t culpable in a major way by promoting the lie that led to them is gag inducing.
Of course it isn’t possible to leave meandering Mitch out of my pictorial tour as he goes from shooting arrows to Valentines at Trump depending on which he thinks his political winds are blowing.
Last and least but not least as difficult to dig out emotional splinter here the Former Guy. Even though we all hope Trump will self-destruct, shatter into a mosaic of malignant narcissistic fragments, and end up if not at Sing Sing at the least he be spending time with other white color criminals (many of them Jewish) at Otisville Correctional Institute, some us worry he will end up slipping back into power.
To repeat:
‘You call this a vacation?’