Chapter 23 Healing Through Laughter

Could you please tell us about laughter, its calming power, its chemical effects on the mind, and its transformative and healing power?

Laughter has a calming and healing power; it truly alters your chemistry, your brainwaves, and your intelligence, making you smarter. The part of your mind that has been dormant suddenly awakens. Laughter reaches the innermost parts of your mind and heart. A person who laughs a lot is unlikely to have heart disease, a person who laughs a lot is unlikely to commit suicide, and a person who laughs a lot naturally knows the world of tranquility, because when laughter stops, tranquility suddenly appears. Each time the laughter deepens, a deeper tranquility follows.

It truly makes you clearer, freeing you from the garbage of tradition and the past. It gives you a new insight into life, making you more vibrant, radiant, and creative.

Even medicine now says that laughter is one of the most profound medicines nature offers. If you can laugh when you're sick, you'll soon recover. If you can't laugh, even if you're healthy, you'll eventually lose your health and become sick. Laughter brings energy from your inner source to your surface. The energy begins to flow, following laughter like a shadow. Have you ever observed this? When you truly laugh, for those few moments, you're in a deep state of meditation. Thought stops because it's impossible to laugh and think simultaneously; they are completely opposite—either you can laugh or you can think. If you truly laugh, thinking will stop; if you're still thinking, then the laughter is meaningless; it's merely half-hearted, with a time lag. It's an incomplete laugh. When you truly laugh, suddenly the mind disappears. The entire Zen method is about how to enter "no-mind," and laughter is one of the beautiful gateways to it.

As far as I know, dancing and laughter are the best, most natural, and easiest gateways. If you truly dance, thoughts cease; you can keep dancing or keep spinning into a vortex, where all boundaries and divisions disappear. You don't even know where your body ends and where existence begins. You merge into existence, and existence merges into you; there is an overlap of boundaries. If you truly dance, don't try to control it, but let it control you, let it occupy you—if you are occupied by that dancing, thoughts cease, and the same thing happens when you laugh. If you are occupied by laughter, thoughts cease. If you know some moments of "mindlessness," those glimpses will assure you that more rewards will come as you become more and more like that, more and more possess that quality, more and more "mindless." Thoughts must be increasingly discarded. Laughter can be a beautiful guide to entering a state of thoughtlessness…

Zen practitioners are more mentally sound. In their madness, their minds are more sound than yours. They begin with laughter…and then you feel that laughter surfacing, emerging, all day long. So many absurd things are happening everywhere! God must be laughing his head off—for centuries, witnessing the absurdity of this world. The people he created, and all these absurdities, it truly is a comedy. He must be laughing. If you quiet down after you've finished laughing, one day you will hear God laughing too, you will hear the whole of existence laughing—the trees and the stones and the stars and you are laughing.

Zen monks laugh even when they're about to go to sleep at night. As the day ends, and the play closes once more, they smile and say, "Goodbye. If I'm still alive tomorrow morning, I'll greet you with another laugh."

Give it a try! Start and end your day with laughter, and you'll see that, gradually, more and more laughter will begin to occur between the two. The more you laugh, the more religious you become.

Countless people have forgotten how to laugh. In the Soviet Union, psychologists prepared manuals to teach people how to laugh in primary and secondary schools, universities, and hospitals because they discovered what I've been telling you all along: love and laughter go hand in hand, and laughter is one of the best medicines. It's also a wonderful form of meditation. Only in the Soviet Union did they delve so deeply into researching what happens when people laugh. Their blood circulation changes, their brain cells become more active, and their heartbeats become more rhythmic. Scientists discovered that things like laughter are very important, but their approach was incredibly foolish; they thought it had to be trained, that every child had to be trained on how to laugh.

If everyone in the Soviet Union had been trained to laugh, then laughter would never have existed. Now they say that every hospital must have a special area—a humor area—where all patients can tell jokes and laugh. That's to be expected: what medicine can't do, laughter can. But for me, if that laughter comes from training, it might have some effect, but it can't be a complete transformation, in which there's a moment when your whole being is excited, expansive, and revitalized, without any side effects.

Just today, I learned that one-third of the world's diseases are created by doctors. Without anyone noticing! It's because their medicines produce side effects. At some point, the drug might work, but it can produce things in your chemistry, your hormones, or your physiology that you never expect. You take aspirin just for your headache, or more truthfully, for your wife! But that aspirin will have its own side effects, and you become a complex situation.

If even laughter must be trained, then humanity is truly pitiful! Imagine birds saying, "Train us first, then we'll sing." Imagine peacocks saying, "We don't care about the clouds, train us first, then we'll display our plumage." Those days must be ugly. Peacocks dance when dark clouds gather and rain is imminent; they don't need training, there are no training schools for peacocks. Birds don't need training, flowers don't need training, so why must humans be trained in everything? Why can't they be allowed to be spontaneous?

There's a fear of being spontaneous because spontaneous behavior is unpredictable. You might laugh at someone, and they might think you're an idiot. They don't need to laugh back; they're spontaneous, and they enjoy being seen as an idiot. There's nothing wrong with that; that's their problem. You're laughing; that's your problem. Why mix them up? To avoid this, people have to be trained in everything: how to walk, how to talk, what to say, and when to say it. Naturally, it all becomes very artificial, like actors in a play simply repeating lines.

The path to healing is never-ending.

Dear students, we have embarked on this profound and enriching learning journey together. Starting with "The Call and Mission of the Healer," we explored the deep power of the subconscious, mastered diverse healing tools, delved into real cases, decoded the secrets of the mind, and paid special attention to vital life issues such as women's growth and relationship healing.

This journey was not easy. It required not only intellectual learning but also heartfelt connection, and the courage to confront your inner shadows and vulnerabilities. We witnessed every courageous sharing, every profound reflection, and every full engagement in the exercises during the course. Regardless of your starting point, we believe that through this course, you are no longer the curious yet somewhat confused explorer of "healing." Your inner self has become more stable, your perspective has broadened, and your empathy has been greatly enhanced. This growth and transformation is a precious asset of your own and a solid foundation for your future work in helping others.

We sincerely thank you. Thank you for choosing this course, for your trust in us, and for your sincere companionship throughout this journey. Your active participation and valuable feedback have brought this course to life. Every question you asked prompted us to think more deeply; every sharing you made added warmth and strength to this learning community. This course is complete because of you, and it is more meaningful because of you.

The end of this course does not signify the end of learning, but rather a brand new beginning. The path of healing is endless. As a future healer, your most important task will always be self-exploration and growth. Please integrate the mindfulness, self-compassion, and inner dialogue practices learned in this course into your daily life. Remember, you yourself are the most effective healing tool. Only when you continuously connect with yourself and heal yourself can you accompany and support others with greater clarity, stability, and compassion.

We hope you will responsibly apply the knowledge and skills learned in this course to your work and life . Whether you are a professional psychotherapist or an enthusiast hoping to use what you've learned to help your friends and family, please always remember the ethics and responsibilities of a therapist. Use your professional knowledge to serve society and your compassion to warm the world. This world needs more therapists with professional ethics and humanistic care to ignite the light of hope in others' lives.

May you be your own light, and the light of others. May you heal yourself as you heal others. May you live your most authentic, complete, and powerful self on this meaningful path.