:: LAUGHTER ::

LIFE IS FUN, LAUGHTER, JOY

There are people who become disturbed the moment you laugh; they would like to teach you that life is not all play. These people are themselves ill. They have missed life and they would not like anybody else to enjoy it. The priests are ill people; they would not like you to enjoy. They have missed; they are jealous of you. And they have staked too much: their egos are fulfilled only because they have been against life. They have chosen ego against life. If you choose life they will be against you. They will go on curbing you, they will go on condemning you, they will go on creating guilt in you. No greater calamity, not a bigger calamity can happen to humanity as has happened through religions. The calamity is that they have created a guilty conscience. So whenever you are enjoying, deep down somewhere you start feeling guilty, as if you are doing something wrong. Whenever you are healthy, you start feeling something is wrong. Whenever you are dancing, you start feeling something is wrong. Whenever you laugh, you can never laugh totally because deep down something goes on pulling you back: "What are you doing?" From the very childhood, whenever you were happy there was somebody to teach you that life is not all play: "Stop laughing! Be serious! When will you be mature? Be grown up! Enough is enough! Drop all this nonsense of childhood." Somebody was always round the corner to teach you.

They have lost: they could not enjoy so they cannot allow others to enjoy. This is how, from generation to generation, diseases are being transferred.

Take hold of your own life. See that the whole existence is celebrating. These trees are not serious, these birds are not serious. The rivers and the oceans are wild, and everywhere there is fun, everywhere there is joy and delight. Watch existence, listen to the existence and become part of it. Then you become a Baul, then you become a lover -- because love can exist only with a deep respect for fun, with a deep respect for delight. Love cannot exist with a serious mind. With a serious mind, logic is in tune. Be non-serious. I'm not saying not to be sincere. Be sincere, but be non-serious. Sincerity is something else; seriousness is totally different. Be sincere with existence, then you will be true; you will become part of this cosmic LEELA, this cosmic play.

The Beloved, Vol-1
# 9, It is always God who loves

LAUGHTER TIME WITH OSHO:

1. A man who took his little girls to the amusement park noticed that Mulla Nasrudin kept riding the merry-go-round all afternoon. Once when the merry-go-round stopped, the Mulla rushed off, took a drink of water and headed back again. As he passed near the girls, their father said to him, "Mulla, you certainly do like to ride on the merry-go-round, don't you?"
"NO, I DON'T. RATHER I HATE IT ABSOLUTELY AND AM FEELING VERY SICK BECAUSE OF IT," said Nasrudin. "BUT,
THE FELLOW WHO OWNS THIS THING OWES ME $80 AND TAKING IT OUT IN TRADE IS THE ONLY WAY I WILL EVER COLLECT FROM HIM."

2. The young lady had said she would marry him, and Mulla Nasrudin was holding her tenderly. "I wonder what your folks will think," he said. "Do they know that I write poetry?"
"Not yet, Honey," she said. "I HAVE TOLD THEM ABOUT YOUR DRINKING AND GAMBLING, BUT I THOUGHT I'D BETTER NOT TELL THEM EVERYTHING AT ONCE."

3. Mulla Nasrudin stood quietly at the bedside of his dying father. "Please, my boy," whispered the old man, "always remember that wealth does not bring happiness."
"YES, FATHER," said Nasrudin, "I REALIZE THAT BUT AT LEAST IT WILL ALLOW ME TO CHOOSE THE KIND OF MISERY I FIND MOST AGREEABLE."

4. Mulla Nasrudin was testifying in Court. He noticed that everything he was being taken down by the court reporter. As he went along, he began talking faster and still faster. Finally, the reporter was frantic to keep up with him.
Suddenly, the Mulla said, "GOOD GRACIOUS, MISTER, DON'T WRITE SO FAST, I CAN'T KEEP UP WITH YOU!"

5. The preacher was chatting with Mulla Nasrudin on the street one day.
"I felt so sorry for your wife in the mosque last Friday," he said, "when she had that terrible spell of coughing and everyone turned to look at her."
"DON'T WORRY ABOUT THAT," said the Mulla. "SHE HAD ON HER NEW SPRING HAT."

6. Mulla Nasrudin: "My wife has a chronic habit of sitting up every night until two and three o'clock in the morning and I can't break her of it."
Sympathetic friend: "Why does she sit up that late?"
Nasrudin: "WAITING FOR ME TO COME HOME."

7. Mulla Nasrudin and his two friends were talking about their face resemblances.
First: "My face resembles that of Winston Churchill. I have often been mistaken for him."
Second: "In my case, people think I am President Nixon and ask me for my autograph."
Mulla Nasrudin: "That's nothing. Well, in my case I have been mistaken for God himself!"
First and Second together: "How?"
Mulla Nasrudin "Well, when I was convicted and sent to jail the fourth time, the jailer, on seeing me, exclaimed: "OH, GOD, YOU HAVE COME AGAIN!"

8. A housewife adorned with a head full of curlers, puffy eyes, no make-up, covered in a tatty old dressing-gown and worn-out furry slippers runs out of the house with the garbage just as the garbage truck is about to move on. She rushes up to the truck and, panting, asks the garbage man, "Am I too late?"
"No, ma'am, just jump right in!"

9. I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin found a mirror on the road. He had never seen a mirror -- some traveler passing by the side of the village may have dropped the mirror. He looked in the mirror and said, "My God, this is my father! And this old cheat used to have a photograph of himself and we never knew about it."
He took the mirror home. He did not want to show it to his wife because an unnecessary quarrel would arise -- any point was enough -- so he went upstairs. The wife was looking out of the corner of her eye... "That old fellow is certainly doing something, the way he has entered." And as he left the house, she went upstairs. He had hidden it inside a box underneath his clothes, but she found it. No husband can hide anything which the wife cannot find, it has never happened.
She looked into the mirror and she said, "My God, in this old age... and he is having a love affair. And with this old woman, rotten!"