On YouTube, there's that famous joke the Dalai Lama didn't understand — and neither did I. It even made headlines in my part of the world, and on some of the sites I frequent, yet nobody ever bothered to explain it. I am at a loss. I suppose pretty much every non-native speaker will have trouble getting it.
The Dalai Lama walks into a pizza shop and says "can you make me one with everything?"
Is this some sort of pun? Double-entendre? A top-voted comment on YouTube says, "The joke is based on ambiguities of an expression, not the ideal joke to crack with a foreigner." Well, duh. Thanks for nothing. I looked up every single word of it in several dictionaries, including can, shop, one, make, with, walk, and each of these has a multitude of meanings, and I have no idea how they work together to create something funny.
Answer
This is indeed a pun.
To make someone something can mean "to create something for someone", as in, I made her a sandwich. But it can also mean "to change someone into some thing or state", as in, I made her angry; Zeus made her (into) a cow.
To be one with something is a spiritual expression meaning...something spiritual. When people say they are one with the universe, they mean they experience some sort of supernatural bond with the entire universe. Don't ask me how it works. Here everything is equivalent to the universe. This is known as nondualism. The Dalai Lama is known for his spirituality.
But one can also stand for one pizza, as in can you make me one [pizza] with [all available toppings]: everything means "every topping/ingredient you have that you can put on a pizza".
It's hilarious because people obsess over existential questions and the meaning of life, and where God is, etc ad infinitum. The Dalai Lama always makes short work of the great mysteries. Here in a perfect merger of form and content, the joke is that the Tibetan Buddhist ideal is to find a stance from which to be "one with everything." Couldn't have made shorter work of the human task for each lifetime. The Dalai Lama would be the last to ask someone ELSE to make him "one with everything," which is another layer of funny.
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