Garry Shandling: So one time I was with the Dalai Lama and he said, "I understand you have some joke about the Buddha." How would you like to be in this position? .... And you know, he's looking at me and he's got the glasses on, and he's the Dalai Lama. I'm talking to the Dalai Lama. And I'm comfortable with that. And I said, "Well, [delivering the joke]:
"Buddha never got married 'cause his wife would have said, ‘What are you gonna do, sit around the house like that all day?'
"Well, I'm meditating, honey."
"Why don't you meditate while you're taking out the trash?
And there's dead silence in this little hut, excerpt for the three American monks, who are laughing hysterically. And so then I explained to him the joke: "In American culture, the husbands and wives sometimes argue because the wife thinks the husband is lazy and sitting around..."
And [the Dalai Lama] goes, "Oh... Funny."
That's what you want -- you want to have a three-minute gap from when you tell the joke to when you get the laugh."