Beloved Osho,

In a world ridden with hate and hostility, sadness and sorrow, you seem to be the lonely bard of love and laughter. Is this not hilarious?

It is.

Maitreya, it is hilarious but somebody has to begin it.
We want the world to be less serious and more sensitive. Sincere of course, but serious never.

We want the world to learn that the sense of humor is one of the most fundamental qualities of a religious man.

If you cannot laugh, you will miss many things in life, you will miss many mysteries.

Your laughter makes you a small innocent child, your laughter joins you with existence – with the roaring ocean, with the stars and their silence.

Your laughter makes you the lonely part of the world which has become intelligent, because only intelligent people can laugh. That’s why animals cannot afford to laugh – they don’t have that much intelligence.

You can try – you can tell a joke to your buffalo and see what happens.

And because seriousness has always been taught to be almost necessary for respectability, it has made everybody serious. It is not that they are serious for any reason, but it has now become their second nature; they have forgotten completely that seriousness is a sickness, it means the sense of humor is dead in you.

Otherwise the whole of life all around is so full of hilarious things.

If you have a sense of humor, you will be surprised that there is no time to be sad – every moment something or other is happening everywhere.

My mission certainly is to bring laughter to the whole of humanity – which has forgotten it. And when you forget laughter, you always forget songs, you forget love, you forget dance – it is not that you only forget laughter.

Laughter has its own combination of qualities, just as seriousness has its own combination of qualities.
Forget laughter and you will forget love.

With a sad face, how to say to a woman “I love you”? You will have to smile a little bit.

With a serious face you cannot say even the smallest thing.

People are taking everything so seriously that it becomes a burden on them.

Learn to laugh more.

To me, laughter is as sacred as prayer.

Osho, Sermons in Stone, Ch 5, Q 5