LAUGHTER is the very essence of religion. Seriousness is never religious, cannot be religious. Seriousness is of the ego, part of the very disease. Laughter is egolessness.

 

Yes, there is a difference between when you laugh and when a religious man laughs. The difference is that you laugh always about others -- the religious man laughs at himself, or at the whole ridiculousness of man's being.

 

Religion cannot be anything other than a celebration of life. And the serious person becomes handicapped: he creates barriers. He cannot dance, he cannot sing, he cannot celebrate. The very dimension of celebration disappears from his life. He becomes desert-like. And if you are a desert, you can go on thinking and pretending that you are religious but you are not.

 

You may be a sectarian, but not religious. You can be a Christian, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Jain, a Mohammedan, but you cannot be religious. You believe in something, but you don't know anything. You believe in theories. A man too much burdened by theories becomes serious. A man who is unburdened, has no burden of theories over his being, starts laughing.

 

The whole play of existence is so beautiful that laughter can be the only response to it. Only laughter can be the real prayer, gratitude.

 

This Hotei is tremendously significant. Rarely has a man like Hotei walked on the earth. It is unfortunate -- more people should be like Hotei; more temples should be full of laughter, dancing, singing. If seriousness is lost, nothing is lost -- in fact, one becomes more healthy and whole. But if laughter is lost, everything is lost. Suddenly you lose the festivity of your being; you become colorless, monotonous, in a way dead. Then you energy is not streaming any more.

 

Laughter is a flowering. If Buddha was the seed, then Hotei is the flower on the same tree. If Buddha is the roots, then Hotei is the flower on the same tree. And if you want to understand Buddha, try to understand Hotei. And it is right that people used to call him the Laughing Buddha. Buddha has come of age in Hotei. Buddha has laughed in Hotei. Enlightenment has come to its very crescendo.

 

But it is difficult to understand Hotei. To understand him you will have to be in that festive dimension. If you are too much burdened with theories, concepts, notions, ideologies, theologies, philosophies, you will not be able to see what this Hotei is, what his significance is -- because he will laugh looking at you. He will laugh because he will not be able to believe that a man can be so foolish and so ridiculous.

 

It is as if a man is just trying to live on a cookery book and has forgotten to cook food; just goes on studying books about food and how to prepare it and how not to prepare it, and argues this way and that -- and is all the time hungry, all the time dying, and has forgotten completely that one cannot live on books. That's what has happened: people are living on Bibles, Korans, Dhammapadas, Gitas -- they have completely forgotten that religion has to be lived. It is something that has to be digested. It is something that has to circulate in your blood, become your bones, your very marrow. You cannot just think about it. Thinking is the most superficial part of your being. You have to absorb it!

 

This story has to be understood very deeply.

 

IN THE T'ANG DYNASTY THERE WAS A STOUT FELLOW WHO WAS CALLED THE HAPPY CHINAMAN, OR THE LAUGHING BUDDHA.

 

WHEN for the first time you hear the phrase 'laughing Buddha' it looks a little contradictory, a contradiction in terms. A Buddha and laughing? Not a single statue exists, not a single painting, not a single description, of Buddha as laughing. But that is not because Buddha never laughed -- that is because Indians are much too serious about religion.

 

Maybe that is one of the basic reasons why Buddhism disappeared from India. India was too serious, too intellectual, too full of theorizing. Buddha was very simple. His approach was not of the mind; his approach was of the existential being. And this country is the country of the pundits, the scholars, the learned men, the knowledgeable. If Buddha disappeared from this country, it seems natural.

 

He was bringing a totally different dimension -- something very original; something very natural yet very original because man has forgotten it. He was doing a tremendous service to humanity. He was not a pundit, not a philosopher, not a metaphysician. He was a very simple being -- silent, happy, fully alive, living moment-to-moment.

 

If you want to understand Buddha, go via Hotei. Hotei is his true disciple. It is very difficult, because whenever a man like Buddha happens immediately pundits and scholars gather around. because they get new material for their theorizing. Intellectuals immediately gather around. They have something new to philosophize about, to write about, to make scriptures of.

 

It is said -- a very old story -- that once it happened:

 

A man became Enlightened. The disciples of the Devil immediately went to the Devil, their master, and they said, "What are you doing sitting here? Run fast! Rush fast! One man has become Enlightened -- and we have to destroy his truth before it reaches to people, otherwise Hell will become empty, nobody will be coming to Hell. Everybody will go to Heaven, to Paradise, or to Moksha!"

 

It is said that the Devil sitting there smiled silently. He said, "Don't be worried -- there is no hurry and no worry. Scholars have already reached there. They will destroy the truth. They do our work so perfectly that we need not be worried."

 

Whenever a truth is born, a ray of light, suddenly scholars gather together -- intellectuals, professors, philosophers. theoreticians -- and they jump upon the truth, they crush it; they mould it into dead theories and scriptures. That which was alive becomes just a paper thing. The real rose disappears.

 

Once I was staying in a Christian friend's house. I started looking into his Bible: there was a rose. He must have kept it in the Bible. Many years old -- dry, dead, crushed between the pages of the Bible. I started laughing. He came rushing from his bathroom. He said, "What! For what are you laughing? What has happened?"

 

I said, "The same has happened to truth as has happened to this rose. Between the pages of your Bible, the rose has died. Now it is just a memory of something which was alive one day. Just a remembrance. All fragrance gone, all aliveness gone. It is as dead as a plastic flower or a paper flower. It has a history but it has no future. It has a past but it has no possibility. And the same has happened to truth. In the pages of the scriptures it has died."

 

The Devil said, "Don't be worried. Take it easy -- If people have already reached there: the scholars, the professors; they will immediately crush it."

 

When truth happens it is non-verbal, it is silent. It is so profound it cannot be expressed through words. Then sooner or later people will come who will put it into words, who will systematize it. And in their very systematization it is killed.

 

Hotei lived a totally different life from an ordinary religious man. His whole life was nothing but a continuous laughter. It is said about Hotei that even sometimes in sleep he would start laughing. He had a big belly, and the belly would shake. Sardar Gurdayal Singh would have enjoyed meeting him, and Hotei would have enjoyed Sardar Gurdayal Singh. People would ask him, "Why are you laughing? and even in sleep!" Laughter was so natural to him that any and everything would help him to laugh. Then the w hole life, awake or asleep, is a comedy.

 

You have turned life into a tragedy. You have made a tragic mess of your life. Even when you laugh, you don't laugh. Even when you pretend to laugh, the laughter is just forced, manipulated, managed. It is not coming from the heart, not at all from the belly. It is not something coming from your center; it is just something painted on the periphery. You laugh for reasons -- which have nothing to do with 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 maybe 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 may 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.

 

Much you can learn from Hotei.

 

IN THE T'ANG DYNASTY THERE WAS A STOUT FELLOW WHO WAS CALLED THE HAPPY CHINAMAN...

 

HE MUST have been stout, he laughed so much. 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.

 

-Osho, "A Sudden Clash of Thunder, #9"