Tales With My Lama: Laugh Away Your Ego
Pastor David has been a student of His Eminence Tsem Rinpoche for over 15 years and within the ‘Tales With My Lama’ series of articles, he explores his spiritual relationship with Rinpoche, sharing anecdotes, stories, observations and little Dharma nuggets. It is all told to inspire others for their own spiritual relationship with their teachers.
Laugh Away Your Ego
If you have listened to Tsem Rinpoche’s teachings or had the good fortune to meet him personally, you know that he has an irrepressible sense of humour. Rinpoche has a way of making people relax and have a really good laugh.
To do that, he uses his keen sense of observation and incredibly quick mind – nothing escapes his eyes. Some of the funniest moments are when Rinpoche mimics a student’s mannerisms or improvises scenarios that relate to the student’s expressions or reactions towards unpleasant situations or people. They are always spot on and pose a real danger of giving the audience belly-aching laughter.
My personal favourite is when Rinpoche starts a whole conversation in a foreign accent. Rinpoche is proficient in English, French and German as well as Southern American and African-American accents. Each accent comes complete with the appropriate slang, lingo and unique expressions to make it absolutely convincing. At times, Rinpoche makes up entire conversations between several characters, each with its own personality and accent. They are always brilliant, extremely funny and very entertaining.
Rinpoche’s teachings are often punctuated with bouts of laughter, which he sometimes uses deliberately to rouse the sleepy listener and to enrapture them to the message. This helps Rinpoche hold the attention of the audience for extended periods of time. In addition, laughter is a great way to release tension and stress over all manner of emotional issues and make everyone feel good about the teachings and the Dharma.
Naturally, humour is a way to open up the student, to relax them so they are not hung up with how our minds should be pliant and not hold on to conventions of what is appropriate or not appropriate. When Rinpoche teases someone, he encourages that person to laugh at themselves and not be self-conscious about being laughed at.
When we laugh at ourselves, we suffer less because we lower our undue expectations of people and situations. Rinpoche explains that when we are able to laugh at ourselves, we are able to let go of our ego a little. When the ego is reduced, we gain deep understanding and realizations of the Dharma.
This shows us that Rinpoche uses unconventional means to bring benefits to his students and friends. It is just another of the vast variety of methods that Rinpoche uses to develop his students and disciples to be great practitioners and ready for higher teachings and practices. Therefore, he or she is well on the way of practicing the teachings, benefiting others and living a meaningful life.
For more interesting information:
- Tales With My Lama: Why Rinpoche Has To Suffer
- Tales With My Lama : Larger than Life
- Tales with my Lama – Manjushri
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I find the words from Rinpoche are too strong, then I try to be question is it come from my ego. But Rinpoche reminds about “When someone tell you something you dont like, push yourself to listen, push yourself to open, push yourself to change habit of closing people out. When you come across of difficult situation, dont run. Show patience.”
Buddha don’t need any offering from us. The best offering is we practice Dharma, we practice mindfulness so that samsara will be lesser within us also the world.
Dear Moon, I completely understand what you mean. Haha, I think it is from my ego as well that I couldn’t handle the criticism – I guess it is one of the eight worldly concerns too! Sending you blessings and good wishes, and let’s never give up on this path of Dharma together <3 cheering for you!
Rinpoche’s style of teaching is unique and suitable for people at this time. People of the degenerate times are not like last time where they can sit for a prolonged period of time just listening to teachings. People of now will lose their patience and not able to keep their attention.
Rinpoche always think about good way to spread the Dharma relentlessly. From telling jokes to learn about Malaysian’s culture, Rinpoche put his heart into giving teaching and hope that the audience will be able to receive the teachings and understand them.
Thank you, Rinpoche for spreading the Dharma tirelessly and making sure the audience will get the maximum benefit out of it.
Ego can cause many problems, it is an obstacle to our spiritual practice. In Buddhism, we want to practice the 8 verses of mind transformation. If we don’t put our ego down it is very hard to put these in practice. 1 of the 8 verses is to offer victory to others, it requires us to put down our ego.
We don’t have to be egoistic, we are actually quite small if you look at how big the universe is. We may have seen and experienced many things but there are even more things that we have not seen and experienced before. Different people will have different perceptions of us. Their perception is based on their own experience with us, with life and their brought up as well. Therefore, as long as we know we are doing the right thing and conduct ourselves in the right way, we don’t have to argue or justify with others just to prove ourselves right. We can prove to them the real us through or action, which is more important.
Rinpoche definitely has his skilful way to train people and to help people to transform their mind. Rinpoche will always break our wrong perception and wrong views so we can see thing clearer and apply what we have learned from the book or his teachings. This is certainly the advantage of having a teacher.
Thank you so much for this article. It is true that laughter is a great way to release tension and stress over all manner of emotional issues and make everyone feel good. Actually, humor is a way to open up and to relax with everyone so they are not hung up with how our minds.
When we laugh at ourselves, we suffer less because we lower our undue expectations of people and situations. This shows us that Rinpoche uses unconventional means to bring benefits to his students and friends. Thank you.
This is one of my favourite video of Rinpoche’s teachings. Yes, 12 years ago, I have listened to Tsem Rinpoche’s teachings and had the good fortune to meet him personally. It was Rinpoche’s sense of humour that attracted me to the Dharma. I have never seen a monk who can joke like this. The first impact that Rinpoche did to me was monk can talk like this, dress like this and joke like this. When I think deeper about all Rinpoche’s jokes, it was not jokes but Dharma teachings. Every single joke that Rinpoche says sounded funny but truth.
Most of time when the Guru tells you directly about your flaw, you cannot take it due to your super huge ego. But if it’s a joke in a Dharma talk, not directed to anyone, you won’t feel offended at the same time you will some how have a deep impression about it and that makes you started to think and relate to it.
Rinpoche is very skilful and compassionate to use many ways to teach and to make us think. How much you get really depend on how you listen and how you mind, perception, emotion and motivation.
When we able to accept joke about ourselve, then we are letting our ego down one more step. If we keep doing that, at future nothing will bored you, your ego become less. Yes , i agree what Pastor David share about rinpoche joke. Rinpoche is very skillful way to make joke to in front of people let their ego down at the same time teaching dharma for particular student. In this way message easy send acoss without hurting people feeling.
Laughter is the best medicine. For everyone, for every situation, even though it temporary eases and relieves tension that one feels. Rinpoche injects laughters through jokes during his dharma teachings and that keeps everyone awake after the sleepiness wears off. Also it is a great way to get the message across for some people who may find the words too strong and who perceive they were the target of the words.
懂得嘲笑“自我”，接受“自我”，改进“自我”，是让自己活得比較自在的，情緒也是比較穩定的，生活品質也得到改善的。佛教中讲的“修行”，便是修正我们的自我， 仁波切说，当我们能够嘲笑自己时，我们能够放松一点自我。 当自我减少时，我们对佛法有了深刻的理解和认识， 所以懂得嘲笑自己，是一件好事。
“When we laugh at ourselves, we suffer less because we lower our undue expectations of people and situations. Rinpoche explains that when we are able to laugh at ourselves, we are able to let go of our ego a little. When the ego is reduced, we gain deep understanding and realizations of the Dharma.”
I felt the above is very powerful. It makes the teaching lively, funny and entertaining on the mundane level while on the other hand it has a much higher level of purpose and meaning. This manner of deep meaning purpose Dharma talk i feel is only prevalent from someone highly attained, an erudite master.
Everybody has ego, just that we are not aware of that. I like Rinpoche’s way of teaching, by making joke of us, he actually reflects what we are in others’ eyes. It just depends on whether we can accept it or not. Although it is funny and everybody has a good laugh about it, but if it is about our ego, and when Rinpoche pointed at us, although it is a joke, we don’t only accept it, but better contemplate what is the joke on us about. Although sometimes the joke on us is not easy to accept, but the more Dharma we learn, the more we contemplate, ultimately we will get the meaning behind the jokes.
This teaching from Tsem Rinpoche is extremely easy to understand,logical, true, straightlforward & profound.
Dharma is precious but the human beings make the treasures worth less than a penny. Extremely sad.. many times we thought we are practicing dharma but we are actually not & doing the opposite.
I like and agreed in one part of the video where Rinpoche explained of facing difficult situation where I believe, many of us hate that kind of feelings. Is true that, we have to be open up our heart, accept, listen, contemplation if we really want to improve ourselves. Freeing our hatred, anger, revenge is the best feeling of bliss.
We all have ego and we all make mistakes our entire lives. If we can just admit our mistakes or laugh at it, then probably it will lower down our ego. It may be a bit difficult at times to control but we if we do try to remind ourselves about it, then probably it will get much easier next time.
I love the way Rinpoche give teachings. Always fun and at ease. Makes it easier to understand and absorb what He is trying to get across. Especially when the teachings get a bit ‘too long’, He will always joke and make us laugh so that we can stay ‘awake’ again and continue to learn. Laughing at ourselves may not be easy for many but when Rinpoche does it, it’s just different. He makes you understand that it’s ok to learn, accept, adept and change our ways to be better than what we are. Thank you Rinpoche for always finding ways to ‘suit’ our monkey minds with the precious Dharma.
When we laugh when faced with our delinquencies and inadequacies, we must first check in on our motivation and intention. Are we laughing because we wish to avoid further attention to us and get upset later or are we laughing because we see how our conduct does not serve us and others.
If the reason is the first, then we are definitely not seriously wanting to transform nor improve to serve us and others better. We will hold onto our grudges and becomes victim to our non virtues resulting in being bitter and angry and eventual depression.
However, if we are able to laugh at ourselves seeing how our conduct and behaviour does not serve us to get rid of our anger, a result of our self cherishing ego, then we are on our way to improve.
Dharma teaches us to accept things as they are and to view circumstances with kindness and compassion. If we are able to detach our emotions and our judgements on circumstance and practise kindness for the betterment of the situation, then we may be happy under most circumstances.
It’s true indeed that most of Rinpoche’s video teachings are very funny and awakening. Rinpoche’s jokes are very entertaining and enlightening. Rinpoche is a very humorous Lama and his jokes always makes us laugh away with happiness! Thank you Rinpoche and Pastor David for this lovely and short write up about Rinpoche’s skillful ways to make us laugh away our ego?????
I have not meet Rinpoche personally, but listening from those teachings videos in the blog, one can definitely tells that Rinpoche has an unfading sense of humour. Laughter is the best medicines …there is a saying. Truly agree with that. Its has many health benefits too reducing tension and stress. Laughter, humour and joy are an important part of life, hence listening to Rinpoche’s teachings is joyful and great learning. Rinpoche uses alternative approach to bring benefits to everyone.
Wow …laughing at ourselves, we suffer less because we lower our undue expectations of people and situations. It blows away our ego. A good teachings and learning something new.
Thank you Rinpoche and Pastor David Lai for this sharing.
Indeed true, Pastor David.
That’s how I was hooked from one teaching to another in Rinpoche YouTube’s channel. Sometimes, I caught myself sitting and watching His teaching for hours. That way, students will learn more if they are engaged in the teachings as well.
Rinpoche stampeded our EGO in this way so that we will not feeling uneasy being caught in that situation at that time but rather to laugh it off. However, I believe those who were being targeted will eventually learn more, especially the way we look at our own problems and emotions. Thank you Pastor