pearls
Explanation
The Joke
The comic shows a Buddhist monk on a dock telling a story to a mollusk (clam or oyster) in the water. The monk recounts that "when the great master died, amidst his funeral pyre we found a neat pile of perfect white pearls." This refers to the Buddhist tradition of sarira — crystalline bead-like objects sometimes found among the cremated remains of revered monks, considered sacred relics signifying spiritual attainment.
The mollusk responds with bewildered irritation: "Pearls? You mean those hard cysts I make to protect my body from parasites and dirt? You guys like those?" The caption reads: "By and large, mollusks have not come around to Buddhism."
The Humor
The joke works by colliding two completely different perspectives on the same object. To Buddhists, pearls (or pearl-like sarira) found in cremation remains are sacred relics indicating great spiritual achievement. To a mollusk, pearls are literally a biological defense mechanism — a foreign irritant gets coated in nacre to protect the animal's soft body. The mollusk's blunt, unimpressed reaction to something humans find precious and holy is the core of the comedy. It also plays on the broader SMBC theme of deflating human spiritual or cultural pretensions by introducing a perspective that strips away all the mystical significance and reveals the mundane biological reality underneath.
References
The comic references the Buddhist tradition of sarira (also called sharira or ringsels), which are bead-like crystalline structures sometimes found among the cremation ashes of Buddhist spiritual masters. They are considered evidence of the master's spiritual realization. The biological process of pearl formation in mollusks involves coating an irritant (such as a parasite or grain of sand) with layers of nacre (mother-of-pearl).