:: LAUGHTER ::

LAUGHTER - AN ONGOING AFFAIR
 
Healthy, non-ridiculing and connecting laughter provides physiological, psychological and spiritual benefits you probably never realized or imagined. We are born with the gift of laughter - so, learn to laugh, and live. Laughter is a great thing -- that's why we've all heard the saying, "Laughter is the best medicine." The best part of laughter is you really don't need any "reason" to laugh....just laugh. 
Read on what Osho has to say about the ongoing and everlasting affair in life called Laughter!

"People have their own reasons. Even laughter is businesslike; even laughter is economic, political. Even laughter is not just laughter. All purity is lost. You cannot even laugh in a pure way, in a simple way, childlike. And if you cannot laugh in a pure way, you are losing something tremendously valuable. You are losing your virginity, your purity, your innocence.
Watch a small child; watch his laughter -- so profound, comes from the very center. When a child is born, the first social activity that the child learns -- or junebe it is not right to say 'learns', because he brings it with himself -- is smiling. The first social activity. By smiling he becomes part of society. It seems very natural, spontaneous. Other things will come later on -- that is his first spark of being in the world, when he smiles. When a mother sees her child smiling, she becomes tremendously happy -- because that smile shows health, that smile shows intelligence, that smile shows that the child is not stupid, not retarded. That smile shows that the child is going to live, love, be happy. The mother is simply thrilled.
Smiling is the first social activity, and should remain the basic social activity. One should go on laughing the whole of one's life. If you can laugh in all sorts of situations, you will become so capable of encountering them -- and that encounter will bring maturity to you. I am not saying don't weep. In fact, if you cannot laugh, you cannot weep. They go together; they are part of one phenomenon: of being true and authentic.
There are millions of people whose tears have dried; their eyes have lost luster, depth; their eyes have lost water -- because they cannot weep, they cannot cry; tears cannot flow naturally. If laughter is crippled, tears are also crippled. Only a person who laughs well can weep well. And if you can weep and laugh well, you are alive. The dead man cannot laugh and cannot weep. The dead man can be serious. Watch: go and look at a corpse -- the dead man can be serious in a more skillful way than you can be. Only an alive man can laugh and weep and cry.
These are moods of your inner being, these are climates -- enriching. But, by and by, everybody forgets. That which was natural in the beginning becomes unnatural. You need somebody to poke you into laughter, tickle you into laughter -- only then do you laugh. That's why so many jokes exist in the world.
You june not have observed, but Jews have the best jokes in the world. And the reason is because they have lived in deeper misery than any other race. They had to create jokes, otherwise they would have been dead long before. They have passed through so much misery, they have been tortured down the centuries so much, they have been crushed, murdered -- they had to create a sense of the ridiculous. That has been a saving device. Hence, they have the most beautiful jokes. the funniest, the profoundest.
What I am trying to show you is this: that we laugh only when there is some reason which is forcing us to laugh. A joke is told, and you laugh -- because a joke creates a certain excitement in you. The whole mechanism of a joke is: the story goes in one direction, and suddenly it takes a turn; the turn is so sudden, so drastic, that you could not have imagined it. Excitement grows and you are waiting for the punchline. And then suddenly, whatsoever you were expecting is never there -- something absolutely different, something very absurd and ridiculous, never fulfilling your expectation.
A joke is never logical. If a joke is logical it will lose all its sense of laughter, the quality of laughter, because then you will be able to predict. Then by the time the joke is being said, you will have reached the punchline because it will be a syllogism, it will be simple arithmetic. But then it will not have any laughter. A joke takes a sudden turn, so sudden that it was almost impossible for you to imagine it, to infer it. It takes a jump, a leap, a quantum leap -- and that's why it releases so much laughter. It is a subtle psychological way to tickle you.
I have to tell jokes because I am afraid -- you are all religious people. You tend to be serious. I have to tickle you so sometimes you forget your religiousness, you forget all your philosophies, theories, systems, and you fall down to earth. I have to bring you back to the earth again and again, otherwise you will tend to become serious, more and more serious. And seriousness is a canceric growth.
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."

A SUDDEN CLASH OF THUNDER
CHAPTER #9, LAUGH YOUR WAY TO GOD

Laughter time with Osho:

1. The shy young bride is really upset when she learns that her husband has been married twice before. Through her tears, she asks him what has become of his two previous wives. "I june as well tell you," says her husband. "My first wife died from eating poisonous mushrooms." "And your second wife?" she cries. "She died of a fractured skull," the man answers. "It was her own fault, she wouldn't eat the mushrooms."

2. A blonde walks up to a Coke machine in a Las Vegas casino, puts in a few coins, and out pops a Coke. She puts some more coins into the machine, another can of soda pops out. She keeps putting in coins, and cans of soda keep coming out.
A guy walks up behind her and says, "Can I please use the machine?"
"Get Away!" she says. "Can't you see I'm winning?"

3. A young boy came home from school and told his mother, "I had a big fight with Sidney. He called me a sissy." "What did you do?" the mother asked. "I hit him with my purse!"

4. A man sitting in a bar is complaining to the bartender: "After one year and three thousand dollars with that psychiatrist, he tells me I'm cured. Some cure! A year ago, I was Nancy Reagan -- now I'm nobody."

5. A priest went to a ranch in order to buy a horse, and saw a beautiful one that he liked and asked if he could try it. "Sure," said the rancher, "but I have to tell you something. That horse used to be owned by the bishop, and if you want the horse to move, you have to say, `Good Lord,' and if you want him to stop, you have to say, `Amen.'"
"That's okay," said the priest and jumped up and said, "Good Lord." The horse promptly moved off and then was seen galloping in the mountains. The priest was yelling, "Good Lord, good Lord." and the horse was really moving.
But suddenly they were coming to the edge of the cliff and, in panic, stricken with fear, he yelled, "Stop, stop!" That did not work and then he remembered and shouted, "Amen." The horse stopped right on the edge of the cliff and, wiping his brow with his relief, the priest said, "Good Lord!"

6. The male patient complained to the dentist that he was in terrible pain, but he insisted on saving the tooth. The dentist put on his white coat, adjusted the light on his forehead, started his drill, and said, "Okay, now open your mouth and we'll see what we can do."
Just then the patient grabbed him below the belt. "What the hell are you doing?" the dentist screamed.
"Now," the man said quietly, not letting go, "we're not going to hurt each other, are we?"

7. They were married for twenty-five years and had their biggest argument on the day of their silver anniversary. She never hit harder or lower: "If it weren't for my money, that TV set wouldn't be here. If it weren't for my money, the very chair you're sitting on wouldn't be here!"
"Are you kidding?" he interrupted. "If it weren't for your money -- I wouldn't be here!"

8. "Please," the little man prayed, "you know me. I am always praying to you and yet I have had nothing but bad luck, misery, sickness and despair all my life. And look at the butcher next door. He's never prayed in his life, and yet he has nothing but prosperity, health and joy. How come a believer like me is always in trouble and he is always doing good?"
Suddenly a big booming voice sounded in his ear, "Because the butcher is not always bugging me, that's why!"

9. The local political leader was invited to speak to the inmates of a mental asylum. The politician had begun his talk and had been going for about ten minutes when a fellow in the back stood up and yelled, "Oh, you don't know what you are talking about! Besides, you are talking too much. Why don't you shut up and sit down!"
"I will wait a minute until you put that man out," the politician said to the superintendent.
"Put him out?" the superintendent asked. "Certainly not! That poor man has been here for eight years and that is the first time he has ever said anything that made any sense, sir."

10. The businessmen were discussing a compatriot.
"He used to work for me," said the first one. "I would not trust him with my money. He would lie, steal, cheat; anything for a buck."
"How do you know him so well?"
"How?" said the first. "I taught him everything he knows."