[Buddha-l] Re: Pennsylvania and crying Buddhas

[jkirk]

> 
> There is a Buddhist abhidhamma treatise that has an elaborate discussion
> of laughter. What it says is that Buddhas and other arahants can smile
> without parting their lips, but they would never do anything as unseemly
> as showing their teeth while smiling, let alone something as utterly
> unrefined as slapping a knee, rocking back and forth, wheezing,
> whooping, snorting, cackling, giggling or ejecting coffee or other hot
> liquids through the nostrils onto a keyboard. 
> 
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Well well, this required behavior of overt expression of risibility is 
identical to the display rules of the same for married women and virgins 
in those days, such signifying purity and self-control. (This comment is 
reading the culture backwards, haven't found any Buddhist texts on 
female manners to back me up.)  Courtesans could be more expressive.  
These laughter rules, if true (and not a, um, joke?) seem to reflect one 
of several ways whereby Buddhist texts proscribed displays 
reflecting excess testosterone.  
Joanna