Osho has indicated that his discourses would become more illogical, irrational, more like poetry. Sometimes Osho’s words in discourses and darshans are published in verse form. At this time he tells many jokes.
Life is not economics, nor is it politics. It is a poetry, and the poetry is by its very nature, by its very definition, illogical. The poetry is beautiful because there are sudden leaps and jumps. The prose is not so beautiful, because there are no sudden jumps and leaps. The prose moves on plain ground, in a logical sequence.
Sooner or later, when you are ready, I am going to drop talking in a sequential way. Sooner or later, when my sannyasins are ready, my talks will be more like a collage. You will have to find out what he means. You will have to find out your own meaning. I will say a few things, but I will go on jumping and I will not connect as I connect right now. Once you are ready–more attentive, more aware, more alert–I will not connect with logic, I will drop the logic. The unity will be there, but not on the surface. The unity will be there because they will all be my statements–the unity will consist in me. And the unity will be there because they are to be understood by your awareness–the unity will come in your awareness. But taken directly, if a visitor comes, he will think this man is mad. Right now I connect. I connect because I know you will not be able to understand the absurd yet. I am waiting for the day you are ready, so I can be as absurd as life is.
Have you seen anywhere any symmetry in nature? It is not there. Man makes things in a symmetrical way. If he makes a house he makes it symmetrical. But in nature there is no symmetry. A great pine tree, and just by the side a small rosebush. And you cannot ask what is the connection between the rosebush and the pine tree. Existence will laugh; it will say, “Who said that there is any need for any connection? The rosebush is a rosebush and the pine is a pine–and both are happy. There is no need to bridge them.”
Sooner or later I am going to become just like life; I will say something and then I will forget about it and I will tell a joke which is completely unrelated. Then it is for you to work it out. Then it will be more beautiful, certainly more beautiful, because it will be more playful. That is the meaning of a collage, so many fragments from so many dimensions together. On the surface, no unity; but if you look deep there is an organic unity. That unity exists in the painter, not in the painting.
If you really want to know the meaning of the poetry, you will have to go deep into the heart of the poet. For prose you need not go into the heart. Prose is plain, prose is worldly, prose is of the marketplace, prose is human. Poetry is divine. That’s why all the great scriptures of the world are in poetry–the Upanishads, the Vedas, the Koran, Dhammapada. They are all poetry, beautiful poetry, outpourings of a singing heart. Logic, there is none; love, there is much. ecstas02
You ask: Why are You not serious? Why are You always joking?
God is not serious–what can I do? God is always joking. Look at your own life–it is a joke! Look at other people’s lives, and you will find jokes and jokes and jokes.
Seriousness is illness; seriousness has nothing spiritual about it. Spirituality is laughter, spirituality is joy, spirituality is fun. come07
Just the other day one person has written to me, “You must be the first enlightened one who is telling jokes.” Yes, that is true–at least I can claim that much originality! Otherwise it is very difficult to claim any originality in this world; there is nothing new under the sun. For millions and millions of years man has existed and thousands and thousands of enlightened people have existed; they have done almost everything that can be done. I was really searching what to do–something new! Then I stumbled upon jokes. I said, “This is right!” dh0408
You ask: Are you pushing my pleasure button? When I sit in lecture I am all smiles and it takes me hours to wipe it off my face.
You fool! Why do you try to wipe it off? I make so much effort to create it and you take hours to wipe it off! Never do it again–so that it becomes something permanent, something essential with you, something natural, something that surrounds you.
But I know people are afraid of smiling, because if you are caught red-handed by others smiling for no reason at all, they think you are crazy. So people repress their smiles. That’s why you must have been trying to wipe it off.
But when I push the button I really push the button, and now I am going to push harder! You will not be able to wipe it off even if you make effort for hours or for days! Enjoy it! And what does it matter if people think you are crazy? Why be worried about it? There is nothing wrong in being crazy. Here, at least, everything is crazy!
Just the other day somebody asked, “Osho, there are so many clocks in the ashram. Why do they all show different times?” Just crazy–cuckoo clocks! And if they all show the same time, then what would be the need for so many clocks? Then one would be enough! inzen05
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….
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. thund09
And I have to tell jokes, because the things that I am saying are so subtle, so deep and profound, that if I simply go on telling you those things, you will fall asleep and you will not be able to listen or to understand. You will remain almost deaf.
The profounder the truth I have to tell you, the worst joke I choose for it. The highest the truth I am trying to relate, then the lowest I have to go in search for a joke. That’s why even dirty jokes…I don’t bother. Even a dirty joke can be helpful–more so because it can shock you to the very roots, to the very guts. And that’s the whole point! It helps you to come again and again to your alertness. When I see you are alert, I again go relating that which I would like to relate to you. When I see again you are slipping into your sleep, I have to bring in a joke again.
If you really listen with alertness, there will be no need–I can say the truth directly. But it is difficult. You start yawning…and it is better to laugh than to yawn. trans302
The insistence in the East is on god’s sweetness, his loving qualities, his feminine face. In the East god is depicted as a dancer, as a lover, a flute player, a singer. He is not a very ferocious father-figure, sitting on a golden throne, just waiting for you to be caught and punished and thrown into hell, for small, tiny reasons…in fact, silly reasons that don’t mean much.
What great sins can man do? Somebody drinks alcohol, somebody smokes cigarettes, somebody plays cards and somebody has fallen in love with somebody else’s wife–things like that. What do you call it in Italian? ‘Peccadillos’?…
Peccadillos? That’s right…just small sins. God must be very mean if he counts these things, really mean.
The Eastern concept is that god is love, sweet. Yes, god is your uncle. And god is not an earthquake but a flute player. From there you can start becoming more and more available to god. halle19
love is juice
we in the east have defined god
as god has been defined nowhere else
i have never come across a better definition
and i don’t think there exists any
the upanishads say raso vai saha–god is juice
this is a very strange definition
sometimes i wonder
i may have written that upanishad
maybe in a past life
otherwise who would do it?
i cannot find anybody else doing it clapp13
Osho recommends laughing at oneself rather than others; he often makes jokes about himself
If you can laugh at yourself, everything is okay. People laugh at others, but never laugh at themselves. It has to be learned. If you can laugh at yourself, seriousness is already gone. It cannot make its abode within you if you are capable of laughing at yourself.
In Zen monasteries every monk has to laugh. The first thing in the morning to do is to laugh, the very first thing. The moment the monk becomes aware that he is no longer asleep, he has to jump out of bed, stand in a posture like a buffoon, like a circus joker, and start laughing, laughing at himself. There cannot be any better beginning of the day.
Laughing at oneself kills the ego and you are more transparent, more light, when you move in the world. And if you have laughed at yourself, then others’ laughter toward you won’t disturb you. In fact they are simply cooperating, they are doing the same thing that you were doing. You will feel happy.
To laugh at others is egoistic; to laugh at oneself is very humble. Learn to laugh at yourself–about your seriousness and things like that….
Let the laughter be a belly laughter, not a head-thing. One can laugh from the head: then it is dead. From the head everything is dead; the head is absolutely mechanical. You can laugh from the head: then your head will create the laughter, but it will not go deep in the belly to the hara. It will not go to your toes, it will not go to your whole body. A real laugh is just like a small child laughs. Watch his belly shaking, his whole body throbbing with it–he wants to roll on the floor. It is a question of totality. He laughs so much that he starts crying; he laughs so deeply that the laughter becomes tears, tears come out of him. A laughter should be deep and total. This is the medicine that I prescribe for seriousness…. foll104
What is Your message in short?
Buddha’s message in short is: Be a light unto yourself. And mine? Be a joke unto yourself! wisdom28
What is your English–British or American?
It is certainly not British. To be British is not easy. One has to be born British at least seven times. It takes a very long time to be British. And it is not American either because I am not a tourist. You know I don’t even leave my room–what kind of American can I be?
And why should my English be British or American? My English is my English–Osho English! And this is a democratic country and the constitution declares freedom of speech as one of the fundamental rights. I speak my own language. Why should I speak American or English? In fact, English is too uptight, it is too tense, and American has become too lousy–just the opposite; it is a reaction….
So I simply speak whatsoever way comes to me, whatsoever way comes spontaneously to me. You will have to be a little patient with me inzen10
Why did You decide to speak instead of writing Your philosophy?
My spelling is far worse than my pronunciation! dh0910
Beloved Osho, Don’t You know how to count? One day after the fourth question You said, “Now the seventh question.”
It is really difficult for me. You should be happy that I don’t say after the seventh, “The first question.”…
It is really difficult for me to count. I cannot count on my fingers. To keep my fingers at the back will be very difficult, and I don’t have pockets! wisdom27
Why do you make so many mistakes when you quote other people or refer to Biblical events or to scientific discoveries? I have answered this question many times myself in various ways. Now I would like to hear your answer.
So allow me to commit a few more mistakes.
First: my memory is marvellous.
Mulla Nasruddin was talking to a man and he said ‘My wife has a very bad memory.’
And the man asked ‘Do you mean she forgets everything?’
Mulla Nasruddin said ‘No, she remembers everything!’
If Mulla Nasruddin’s wife has a bad memory, I have a marvellous memory. I forget everything. And I enjoy this forgetfulness; I am not worried about it.
Secondly: I am an ignorant person. I am not a scholar. I enjoy reading books, but I read the Bible, the Gita, the Koran just as one reads novels; they are ancient, beautiful stories. Krishnamurti says he never reads any scripture; he reads only detective stories. I read the scripture, but I read in the scripture just the detective story and nothing else. And I would suggest to Krishnamurti that it would be good if he should look into the Bible; you cannot find a more beautiful story full of suspense. Everything is there: love, life, murder; everything is there. It is very sensational.
Scriptures, to me, have nothing special. Scriptures are as sacred as the trees and the rocks and the stars–or as secular. I don’t make a distinction so I am not very serious about scriptures. The only thing I am serious about is jokes. So when I quote the scripture I quote from memory, when I quote a joke I have it written here in front of me. I never want to make any mistake about the joke–I am really serious. About everything else I am absolutely non-serious….
Scholars become too serious. I am not a scholar and I have no respect for scholars. In fact my attitude is exactly the same as Mulla Nasruddin’s.
Once it happened:
A man came to Mulla Nasruddin and said ‘Nasruddin. have you heard? The great scholar of the town has died and twenty rupees are needed to bury him.’
Mulla gave him a hundred rupee note and said ‘Take it, and while you are doing it, why not bury five?
‘Remember, these scholars are very calculating and cunning people–bury them as deep as possible, otherwise they will come back. And if you need more money, come to me, don’t be shy about it!’ I am neither a scholar nor am I in any way respectful towards scholars or scholarship. That is all bullshit.
I was reading a beautiful poem by E.Y. Harburg. A few lines are of tremendous import. Meditate over them.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree;
And only God who makes the tree
Also makes the fools like me.
But only fools like me, you see,
Can make a God, who makes a tree.
I am tremendously ignorant, and I am happy as I am, and I have no idea to improve upon myself. So if sometimes you are in an awkward situation: somebody says that ‘Osho has said this and this is not correct’. It is your problem: then your Master is found faulty; you feel a little disturbed, your ego is hurt. As far as I am concerned I am perfectly okay. And I will continue to create problems for you! Now you find the answers: invent something, be a little imaginative or inventive. When I can invent so much, why can’t you? You can find some esoteric, occult meaning in it. It is always easy: when you cannot find anything else, always try to find some esoteric, occult meaning in it–there must be….
Don’t be bothered too much about facts there are none, all are fictions. Remember, all are fictions, even my being here and your being here is a tremendous fiction. Nothing ever happens. Truth is. All that happens is fictitious; history is a fiction because whatsoever is, is… nothing ever happens there. God has no history and God has no biography. God only is, there is no ‘was’ and there is no ‘will be’. There is no past and no future. tao110
You say: I have heard that you sometimes make up questions to fit your jokes. Is this so? Please be truthful!
It is very difficult for me to be truthful. I don’t believe in anything, not even in truth! I am not a serious person at all! I believe in playfulness. So…how does it matter whose question it is? And do you think when you write a question it is better than when I write a question? And do you think that when you are writing a question you are really writing or am I writing through you?
If I have to tell a joke tomorrow I can say something today and many questions will come tomorrow! There is really no need for me to write them–I can create questions in you; there is no difficulty. Otherwise, how do these many many questions come?
But you seem to be serious. And I am serious only about jokes! I am not serious about anything else. That’s why you never see me laughing at the jokes–I am really serious!–because jokes are not a laughing matter. It is not a laughing matter. It is not a joke! It is one of the most serious things in life, in fact, the only serious thing.
You ask me: I have heard that you sometimes make up…
Sometimes! Always, every day! because whenever I come across a good joke I cannot wait for tomorrow. Who knows? Tomorrow may come, may not come. I may not be here, you may not be here–and the joke has to be told!…
And you ask me: Is this so? Please be truthful!
Even this question is invented by me! What more truth is needed to prove it? You have not asked it, but I have answered it! guida10
You ask: I overheard someone say that you had problems–do you?
Not one but many–you are my problems, one hundred thousand problems! And as sannyasins will be coming more and more, the problems will go on growing. Each sannyasin brings many problems. And I am here: you can surrender your problems to me. I can take all of your problems because I have none of my own. And because I have none of my own, you can drop your problems into me and they disappear. They have no place to cling to. They simply disappear into the abyss that I have become. fish15
You ask: What did we do to deserve you as our guru, our master?
I don’t know anything about you, but I must have done terrible karma to deserve you! trans202
Are You a black magician or a white magician?
I am an orange one. dh0606
Can a madman become a Buddha?
Only a madman can become a Buddha! The so-called sane people at the most can become Buddhists but not Buddhas, they can become Christians but not Christs. Only a madman….
My invitation is for the mad people of the world. I am a madman’s guide to enlightenment! goose09
What is Your dogma?
Peter, I believe you must be a tourist here; otherwise you cannot ask such a question. I don’t have any dogma. In the first place I don’t like dogs at all! And ‘dogma’ means mother of dogs! Neither do I like any sonofabitch, nor do I like any mother of dogs! There are Christian dogmas and Hindu dogmas and Mohammedan dogmas, and what do they do? They go on barking at each other! I don’t have any dogma at all. Even my kids understand it here, my small sannyasins. You can ask them. dh1206
Do you partake of intoxicating beverages?
How can I answer this question?–because before I answer I must know if it is an enquiry or an invitation! parad108
Why are you called the Master of Masters?
It is a difficult question. I had to look in the Akashic records, and not in the past Akashic records–because it is not recorded there–but in the future Akashic records. This is a future story. Listen carefully.
It happened in Moksha, the ultimate resting place of the awakened ones. A journalist for the local newspaper, The Nirvana Timeless, was desperately seeking material to fill up the center page of the next edition which was due to appear in twenty-five hundred years. There was not much news around in Moksha, and soon he realized that he would have to make something up himself if the center page was not to be left empty again, as it had been for countless ages.
Finally, he hit on the idea of choosing which of the many Buddhas, Arhatas, Bodhisattvas, Christs, Kutubs and other enlightened beings abounding in the lotus paradise was the Master of Masters–in short, a spiritual Mr. Universe competition.
He summoned all the enlightened ones together and asked them to encapsulate in a short phrase the essence of their teaching, which would entitle them to the title of Master of Masters. There was, as usual, a deep silence which lasted a few hundred years. Finally a Zen Master stood forward and hit the journalist hard on the head. This was considered to be well deserved, but not very original.
Another hundred years passed and then a Sufi stood up and began to whirl. Unfortunately he was out of training, and after a couple of months he fell flat on his face, causing some merriment among the Hassidic Masters, who had been surreptitiously pouring oil on the floor to bring the uppity Arab down.
After some goading by Manjushree and Subhuti, Buddha slowly stood up and addressed the gathering in the following way: “There is no teaching and no one to be taught. There is no Master and nothing to master. Nothing can be said; there is no one to hear it.” Then he held up a flower and Mahakashyap giggled as usual. Many applauded the Buddha, but to the journalist it did not appear like the kind of news which would help him to sell his paper.
One after another the enlightened ones came forward to make their bids for the title. Moses gave a few new commandments. Bodhidharma stared at a wall for ninety years. Jesus made a mountain out of a molehill, and delivered a sermon from it. Diogenes displayed his suntan. Shiva and Parvati ran through one hundred twelve new positions they had invented. Gurdjieff drank twenty bottles of brandy, then walked on his hands on a tightrope over the plenum void, smiling with the left side of his face and grimacing with the right. Lao Tzu had a good belly laugh at all these antics. Mansoor would not stop shouting, “Ana’l Haq! Ana’l Haq!” and finally had to be put in a straitjacket and given a couple of valium. Vatsyayana gave himself a blow job to demonstrate existentially that sex and samadhi were manifestations of the same energy–and so on.
It proved impossible to choose which of the awakened ones was the Master of Masters, since even the journalist had attained to choiceless awareness long ago. But the day seemed saved when Teertha, a relative newcomer from England, stood up and declared with typical British diplomacy, “The greatest Master is the one who has yet to come.” Suddenly an Indian mahatma jumped to his feet and cried triumphantly, “Then that must be me–for I have been celibate for eighty-four million lives.”
By unanimous agreement the awakened ones decided that the mahatma’s samadhi was not yet “seedless”, and he was dispelled back to samsara to spill his seed once and for all.
Just as the mahatma disappeared from sight, Osho came out of his room, where he had been sitting all this time, and made his way towards a small marble podium in the corner of the hall. A deathly hush gripped the audience, and even Mansoor shut up. If a look of dread could be said to cloud those tranquil eyes, this is what happened to the gathering.
As Osho sat down and leaned towards the microphone, a cry arose from Mahavira, “Wait! Wait! We proclaim you Master of Masters! Now please go back to your room.”
Osho smiled innocently and left the hall. There was a sigh of relief.
The journalist turned to Mahavira in consternation: “I don’t understand. Why did he get the title? What did he do?”
“Nothing,” said Mahavira, “but last time he spoke here it took us seven hundred years to get him to stop, and send him to Poona!” ggate210