What’s so funny about suffering, anyway? Well, this week, if you follow Dalai Lama news, you couldn’t help but see his bemused reaction to the mangled failure of a “joke” from Australian newscaster Karl Stevanovic. (What sort of reaction was he expecting? That joke gets groans even when it hits the sweet spot, which this one came nowhere near.) I think we’ve gotten more emails about this video than any other single Buddhist event, so it’s clearly struck a nerve. Is it that we’re this starved for Buddhist humor?

Well, Buddhist humorist P. B. Law has nourishment for humor-seeking minds at  buddhisthumor.org. P. B.’s latest piece takes a gentle poke at Tricycle. Gee, thanks, P. B.! (We published several pieces by the iconoclastic writer, including the now-classic “Bodhisattva in the Rye.” P. B.’s new piece begins:

“Mindful” Ousts “Zen” as Top Buddhist Buzzword

MOUNTAIN DEW, CA, June 10, 2011 — “Mindful” has now replaced “Zen” as the top Buddhist buzzword, researchers at Boggle announced today. “After conducting an exhaustive survey of all Buddhist-related books and magazines published in North America during the past decade, we have the hard data to show that ‘mindful’ has taken a commanding lead over ‘Zen’ as the most frequently used word in the Buddhist lexicon,” said head researcher Belle Kerve of the internet behemoth’s Statistical Graphics department. “And its lead continues to widen.”

Read the whole thing here.

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