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Osho Quotes on "Life is
a Cosmic Joke"
1:
When laughter comes out of silence you are not laughing at anybody's cost,
you are simply laughing at the whole cosmic joke. And it really is a joke!
That's why I go on telling jokes to you... because jokes carry more than any
scriptures. It is a joke because inside you you have everything, and you are
searching everywhere. What else should a joke be? You are a king and acting
like a beggar in the streets; not only acting, not only deceiving others,
but deceiving yourself that you are a beggar. You have the source of all
knowledge and are asking questions; you have the knowing self and think that
you are ignorant; you have the deathless within you and are afraid and
fearful of death and disease.
2: When one becomes enlightened, laughter is
almost a natural by-product; spontaneously it comes -- for the simple reason
that we have been searching and searching for lives for something which was
already there inside. Our whole effort was ridiculous! Our whole effort was
absurd. One laughs at the great cosmic joke. One laughs at the sense of
humor that God must have or the existence: that we have it with us already
and we are searching for it. One laughs at one's own ridiculous efforts,
long long journeys, pilgrimages, for something which was never lost in the
first place.
3: My own understanding is that there is
nothing more valuable than laughter. Laughter brings you closest to prayer.
In fact only laughter is left in you when you are total. In everything else
you remain partial, even in lovemaking you remain partial. But when you have
a really heartfelt belly laugh, all the parts of your being -- the
physiological, the psychological, the spiritual -- they all vibrate in one
single tune, they all vibrate in harmony.
Hence, laughter relaxes. And relaxation is spiritual. Laughter brings you to
the earth, brings you down from your stupid ideas of being holier-than-thou.
Laughter brings you to reality as it is. The world is a play of God, a
cosmic joke. And unless you understand it as a cosmic joke you will never be
able to understand the ultimate mystery.
I am all for jokes, I am all for laughter.
4: Everybody takes himself and others
seriously. That's the way of the ego to exist. Start being a little more
playful and you will see ego evaporating. Take life non seriously, as a joke
-- yes, as a cosmic joke. Laugh a little more.
Laughter is far more significant than prayer. Prayer may not destroy your
ego; on the contrary, it may make it holy, pious, but laughter certainly
destroys your ego. When you are really in a state of laughter, have you
observed? -- the ego disappears for a moment. You are again a child,
giggling. Again you have forgotten that you are special. You are no longer
serious; for a moment you have removed your fixation.
That's why I love jokes -- they are poison to your ego! You would like me to
talk about serious things: astral planes and how many bodies men have, seven
or nine, and how many chakras. And every day there are questions --
esoteric, occult. These are the serious people. They have fallen in a wrong
company! I am not serious at all. I don't laugh with you because that is
part of telling a joke: the person who tells it has to be very serious, he
cannot laugh with you. All my laughter I have to do alone.
But my approach towards life is utterly nonserious, playful, because in my
experience this is how the ego disappears. Watch when you laugh: where is
the ego? Suddenly you have melted, suddenly you are liquid, no more solid,
but flowing. You are not old, experienced, knowledgeable. Listen to this
joke and try to find out whether the ego remains or not.
5: If you look around, if you are watchful
enough, then you are bound to stumble again into something so beautiful and
so ridiculous. The very idea of creating the world and creating you all is
such a cosmic joke! God must have a sense of humor.
6: All buddhas have laughed when they awaken.
Their laughter is like a lion's roar. They laugh, not at you, they laugh at
the whole cosmic joke. They lived in a dream, in a sleep, intoxicated
completely by desire, and through desire they looked at the existence. Then
it was not the real existence, they projected their own sleep on it.
You are taking the whole existence as a screen, and then you project your
own mind on it and you see things which are not there, and you don't see
things which are there. And the mind has explanations for everything. If you
raise a doubt, the mind explains. It creates theories, philosophies,
systems, just to feel comfortable, that nothing is wrong. All philosophies
exist to make life convenient, so that everything looks okay, nothing is
wrong -- but everything is wrong while you are asleep.
7: Nobody lives, nobody dies. Nothingness
lives, nothingness dies. You are not. Have a good laugh at this situation.
You are not and you exist. You are not and you are. This is the cosmic joke.
8. It happened: when Rinzai became enlightened
he asked for a cup of tea. His disciples said, "This seems to be profane."
And he said, "The whole thing was foolishness: the seeking, the seeker, the
sought. The whole thing was foolishness. You just give me a cup of tea! None
existed. The seeker was false, the sought was false, so of course the
seeking was false. It was a cosmic joke." That's why I say there is no
purpose -- God is joking with you. The moment you can understand the joke
you are enlightened. Then the whole thing becomes a play, even the
experience disappears.
9. When I was saying last night that life is a
game, a play, and God is playing this whole cosmic joke, one friend
immediately wrote a letter saying that it cannot be conceived that Jesus
being crucified is just God's play. The crucifixion of Jesus cannot be
conceived of as just God's play, it must have some purpose. The question is
not whether any particular thing has some purpose or not, the question is
whether the whole has a purpose or not. You are here. You had a purpose in
coming here, that I know; without purpose you would not be here.
Jesus may have had a purpose, or you may think that he had a purpose.
Christians may think that he had a purpose -- salvation was the purpose, to
liberate humanity from the sin that Adam committed was the purpose. But this
is your thinking. If Jesus is enlightened he cannot have any purpose,
because purpose belongs to ignorance. He can only be in a play. And if he
also thinks that whatsoever he is doing is very serious, purposive, then he
belongs to the same business mind as you.
And the whole, the cosmos, cannot have any purpose, because purpose means
something outside. There is nothing outside the whole. And whenever we think
that God must have some purpose we are talking in deep absurdities, because
if God has any purpose, he is omnipotent so he can do it immediately. Why
waste so much time? If he has only this purpose -- that man should reach
heaven -- he can simply order, "Go to heaven!"...
because when he can say, "Let there be light," and there is light; when he
can say, "Let there be the world," and the world is there, then why can't he
say, "Let there be only heaven," so that everybody is in heaven? Then why
this whole nonsense of Adam committing sin, then Jesus helping people? Why
this nonsense? Purpose is absurd in terms of the total. Purpose may exist
for individual egos because egos cannot exist without purpose, but for the
cosmic there is no ego. It cannot be anything else than a cosmic play.
Even Jesus' crucifixion is a play. That's why Jesus can go to the
crucifixion so easily, not disturbed, as if it is just a drama, as if he is
just acting a role. The man of knowledge is just an actor enacting a role.
What is going to be the result is not his concern. Whatsoever the result,
everything is good. There is neither good nor bad, there is neither in nor
out, there is neither beginning nor end -- but this happens only when you
have disappeared.
10. You see a person and you smile. You smile
for him. One should smile only for oneself. If others share, good. If nobody
shares, good. But one should smile of one's own accord. One should not laugh
to make somebody else happy, because if you are not happy, you cannot make
anybody happy. Even if you are happy, it is very difficult to make somebody
else happy because it depends on that somebody else as to whether he will
accept it or not. One should simply laugh of one's own accord, and one
should not wait for reasons to laugh. That too is absurd. Why wait for
reasons? Life as it is should be enough of a reason to laugh. It is so
absurd, it is so ridiculous. It is so beautiful... it is so wonderful. It is
all sorts of things together. It is a great cosmic joke.
Related Osho Links:
Osho on Sufi Mystic Mulla
Nasruddin
Osho - Many of your Jokes I don't get
Beloved Osho, What is the secret of a Joke
Osho - Why are you against the
Christian Pope
Osho - Religion has been
missing Sense of Humor
Osho - Laughter should become a part
of Sadhana
Mulla Nasruddin Jokes 1,
Nasruddin Jokes 2 ,
Nasruddin Jokes 3
Osho - Why do you tell jokes? and why
don't you laugh at your own Jokes
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