ABSTRACT
This chapter surmises that if God is truly God, God is scarcely sitting on the edge of the holy seat waiting to be "justified". An unknowing awareness of this state of affairs may lie somewhere out in the mists behind the comic/cosmic vision of Zen. Zen and the comic spirit of Zen arose "out of the collision of the lofty spiritualism of Indian Buddhism and the earthiness of Oriental humanism and naturalism". The uses of humor in Zen, and the general Zen spirit and perspective, "share in the comic inclination to move toward reducing tensions, overcoming conflicts, and including opposites in some larger unity. In "Laughing at the Buddhas and Abusing the Patriarchs" emphasis falls upon the iconoclastic character of Zen humor. True liberation calls for the overturning of all idols. "Anything, however holy, is potentially an idol; therefore anything is a legitimate object of laughter"—not excepting the Buddhas themselves together with the patriarchs.
