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Osho on Laughter as a Meditation - Starting
and Ending day with Laughter
Osho -
Laughter brings strength. Now, even medical science says that laughter
is one of the most deep-going medicines nature has provided man with. If
you can laugh when you are ill you will get your health back sooner. If
you cannot laugh, even if you are healthy, sooner or later you will lose
your health and you will become ill.
Laughter brings some energy from your inner source to your surface.
Energy starts flowing, follows laughter like a shadow. Have you watched
it? When you really laugh, for those few moments you are in a deep
meditative state. Thinking stops. It is impossible to laugh and think
together. They are diametrically opposite: either you can laugh or you
can think. If you really laugh, thinking stops. If you are still
thinking, laughter will be just so-so, it will be just so-so, lagging
behind. It will be a crippled laughter.
When you really laugh, suddenly mind disappears. And
the whole Zen methodology is how to get into no-mind -- laughter is one
of the beautiful doors to get to it.
As far as I know, dancing and laughter are the best, natural, easily
approachable doors. If you really dance, thinking stops. You go on and
on, you whirl and whirl, and you become a whirlpool -- all boundaries,
all divisions are lost. You don't even know where your body ends and
where the existence begins. You melt into existence and the existence
melts into you; there is an overlapping of boundaries. And if you are
really dancing -- not managing it but allowing it to manage you,
allowing it to possess you -- if you are possessed by dance, thinking
stops.
The same happens with laughter. If you are possessed
by laughter, thinking stops. And if you know a few moments of no-mind,
those glimpses will promise you many more rewards that are going to
come. You just have to become more and more of the sort, of the quality,
of no-mind. More and more, thinking has to be dropped.
Laughter can be a beautiful introduction to a non-thinking state. And
the beauty is.... There are methods -- for example, you can concentrate
on a flame or on a black dot, or you can concentrate on a mantra, but
the greater possibility is that by the time the mind is disappearing you
will start feeling sleepy, you will fall asleep. Because before the mind
disappears there open two alternatives: sleep -- sushupti -- and samadhi:
sleep and satori.
When thinking disappears, these are the two alternatives left: either
you move into satori -- a fully alert, no-thought state; or a fully
asleep, no-thought state -- sleep. And sleep is more natural, because
you have practised it long. If you live sixty years, twenty years you
have been asleep. It is the greatest activity that you have been doing;
one third of your life is spent in sleep. In no other exercise do you
spend so much time and so much energy.
So if you are doing TM-type meditations, repeating a mantra, by the time
the mantra helps you to become non-thinking, immediately sleep will
possess you. Hence, I call TM a sort of tranquillizer. And that is the
appeal in America for Maharishi and his method, because America is the
only country which is suffering from sleeplessness so tremendously.
Insomnia has become almost common.
If after forty you have not started suffering from insomnia, that simply
means that you are a failure, that you could not succeed -- in business,
in politics. In power you couldn't succeed; you are a failure. All
successful people suffer from insomnia, have to suffer. They suffer from
ulcers, have to suffer. So remember: insomnia, ulcers and things like
that are nothing but certificates of success -- that you have succeeded.
TM has an appeal for the American mind, because repeating a mantra --
monotonous, the same again and again -- the mind loses interest in it,
starts falling asleep. That's the beauty of laughter: you cannot fall
asleep. Laughing, how can you fall asleep? It brings a state of no-mind
and no-thought, and does not allow you to fall asleep.
In a few Zen monasteries, every monk has to start his morning with
laughter, and has to end his night with laughter -- the first thing and
the last thing! You try it. It is very beautiful. It will look a little
crazy -- mm? -- because so many serious people are all around. They will
not understand. If you are happy, they always ask why. The question is
foolish! If you are sad, they never ask why. They take it for granted --
if you are sad, it's okay. Everybody is sad. What is new in it? Even if
you want to tell them, they are not interested because they know all
about it, they themselves are sad. So what is the point of telling a
long story? -- cut it short!
But if you are laughing for no reason, then they become alert --
something has gone wrong. This man seems to be a little crazy because
only crazy people enjoy laughter; only in madhouses will you find crazy
people laughing. This is unfortunate, but this is so.
It will be difficult, if you are a husband or a wife it will be
difficult for you to suddenly laugh early in the morning. But try it --
it pays tremendously. It is one of the most beautiful moods to get up
with, to get out of the bed with.
For no reason! because there is no reason. Simply, you
are again there, still alive -- it is a miracle! It seems ridiculous!
Why are you alive? And again the world is there. Your wife is still
snoring, and the same room, and the same house. In this constantly
changing world -- what Hindus call the 'maya' -- at least for one night
nothing has changed? Everything is there: you can hear the milkman and
the traffic has started, and the same noises -- it is worth laughing
for!
One day you will not get into the morning. One day the milkman will
knock at the door, the wife will be snoring, but you will not be there.
One day, death will come. Before it knocks you down, have a good laugh
-- while there is time, have a good laugh.
And look at the whole ridiculousness: again the same day starts; you
have done the same things again and again for your whole life. Again you
will get into your slippers, rush to the bathroom -- for what? Brushing
your teeth, taking a shower -- for what? Where are you going? Getting
ready and nowhere to go! Dressing, rushing to the office -- for what?
Just to do the same thing again tomorrow?
Look at the whole ridiculousness of it -- and have a good laugh. Don't
open your eyes. The moment you feel that sleep is gone, first start
laughing, then open the eyes -- and that will set a trend for the whole
day. If you can laugh early in the morning you will laugh the whole day.
You have created a chain effect; one thing leads to another. Laughter
leads to more laughter.
And almost always I have seen people doing just the wrong thing. From
the very early morning they get out of bed complaining, gloomy, sad,
depressed, miserable. Then one thing leads to another -- and for
nothing. And they get angry... it is very bad because it will change
your climate for the whole day, it will set a pattern for the whole day.
Zen people are more sane. In their insanity they are saner than you.
They start with laughter... and then the whole day you
will feel laughter bubbling, welling up. There are so many ridiculous
things happening all over! God must be dying of His laughter -- down the
centuries, for eternity, seeing this ridiculousness of the world. The
people that He has created, and all the absurdities -- it is really a
comedy. He must be laughing.
If you become silent after your laughter, one day you will hear God also
laughing, you will hear the whole existence laughing -- trees and stones
and stars with you.
And the Zen monk goes to sleep in the night again with laughter. The day
is over, the drama is closed again -- with laughter he says "Goodbye,
and if I survive again, tomorrow morning I will greet you again with
laughter."
Try it! Start and finish your day with laughter, and you will see, by
and by, in between these two more and more laughter starts happening.
And the more laughing you become, the more religious.
Related Osho Links:
Osho on Zan Master Hotei - Laughing Buddha
Osho on Laughter as a part of Spiritual practice
Osho on Laughter and Its relation
with No Mind
What is the most
stupid thing Mulla
Nasrudin ever did
Laughter
is very essence of religion. Seriousness is never Religious
Osho discourse on Sufi Mystic
Mulla Nasruddin
Osho on Zen Laughter Meditation
and Zen Vision
Osho Jokes on Mulla Nasruddin
Part 1,
Part2,
Part 3
Osho Quotes on Laughter and
Laughter as a Meditation
Osho - Nobody is a
saviour neither Buddha nor Jesus Christ
Laughter is repressed by Society,
Society wants you to be serious
Osho - My whole teaching is
Celebration; not worship but Celebration
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