Osho Quotes on "Life is a Cosmic Joke"

"When laughter comes out of silence you are not laughing at anybody's cost, you are simply laughing at the whole cosmic joke. And it really is a joke! That's why I go on telling jokes to you... because jokes carry more than any scriptures. It is a joke because inside you you have everything, and you are searching everywhere. What else should a joke be? You are a king and acting like a beggar in the streets; not only acting, not only deceiving others, but deceiving yourself that you are a beggar. You have the source of all knowledge and are asking questions; you have the knowing self and think that you are ignorant; you have the deathless within you and are afraid and fearful of death and disease."

 

"When one becomes enlightened, laughter is almost a natural by-product; spontaneously it comes -- for the simple reason that we have been searching and searching for lives for something which was already there inside. Our whole effort was ridiculous! Our whole effort was absurd. One laughs at the great cosmic joke. One laughs at the sense of humor that God must have or the existence: that we have it with us already and we are searching for it. One laughs at one's own ridiculous efforts, long long journeys, pilgrimages, for something which was never lost in the first place."

 

"My own understanding is that there is nothing more valuable than laughter. Laughter brings you closest to prayer. In fact only laughter is left in you when you are total. In everything else you remain partial, even in lovemaking you remain partial. But when you have a really heartfelt belly laugh, all the parts of your being -- the physiological, the psychological, the spiritual -- they all vibrate in one single tune, they all vibrate in harmony.

Hence, laughter relaxes. And relaxation is spiritual. Laughter brings you to the earth, brings you down from your stupid ideas of being holier-than-thou. Laughter brings you to reality as it is. The world is a play of God, a cosmic joke. And unless you understand it as a cosmic joke you will never be able to understand the ultimate mystery. I am all for jokes, I am all for laughter."

 

 

"Everybody takes himself and others seriously. That's the way of the ego to exist. Start being a little more playful and you will see ego evaporating. Take life non seriously, as a joke -- yes, as a cosmic joke. Laugh a little more. Laughter is far more significant than prayer. Prayer may not destroy your ego; on the contrary, it may make it holy, pious, but laughter certainly destroys your ego. When you are really in a state of laughter, have you observed? -- the ego disappears for a moment. You are again a child, giggling. Again you have forgotten that you are special. You are no longer serious; for a moment you have removed your fixation."

 

That's why I love jokes -- they are poison to your ego! You would like me to talk about serious things: astral planes and how many bodies men have, seven or nine, and how many chakras. And every day there are questions -- esoteric, occult. These are the serious people. They have fallen in a wrong company! I am not serious at all. I don't laugh with you because that is part of telling a joke: the person who tells it has to be very serious, he cannot laugh with you. All my laughter I have to do alone.

 

But my approach towards life is utterly nonserious, playful, because in my experience this is how the ego disappears. Watch when you laugh: where is the ego? Suddenly you have melted, suddenly you are liquid, no more solid, but flowing. You are not old, experienced, knowledgeable. Listen to this joke and try to find out whether the ego remains or not.

 

"If you look around, if you are watchful enough, then you are bound to stumble again into something so beautiful and so ridiculous. The very idea of creating the world and creating you all is such a cosmic joke! God must have a sense of humor."

 

"All buddhas have laughed when they awaken. Their laughter is like a lion's roar. They laugh, not at you, they laugh at the whole cosmic joke. They lived in a dream, in a sleep, intoxicated completely by desire, and through desire they looked at the existence. Then it was not the real existence, they projected their own sleep on it.

 

You are taking the whole existence as a screen, and then you project your own mind on it and you see things which are not there, and you don't see things which are there. And the mind has explanations for everything. If you raise a doubt, the mind explains. It creates theories, philosophies, systems, just to feel comfortable, that nothing is wrong. All philosophies exist to make life convenient, so that everything looks okay, nothing is wrong -- but everything is wrong while you are asleep."

 

 

"Nobody lives, nobody dies. Nothingness lives, nothingness dies. You are not. Have a good laugh at this situation. You are not and you exist. You are not and you are. This is the cosmic joke."

 

"It happened: when Rinzai became enlightened he asked for a cup of tea. His disciples said, "This seems to be profane." And he said, "The whole thing was foolishness: the seeking, the seeker, the sought. The whole thing was foolishness. You just give me a cup of tea! None existed. The seeker was false, the sought was false, so of course the seeking was false. It was a cosmic joke." That's why I say there is no purpose -- God is joking with you. The moment you can understand the joke you are enlightened. Then the whole thing becomes a play, even the experience disappears."

 

"When I was saying last night that life is a game, a play, and God is playing this whole cosmic joke, one friend immediately wrote a letter saying that it cannot be conceived that Jesus being crucified is just God's play. The crucifixion of Jesus cannot be conceived of as just God's play, it must have some purpose. The question is not whether any particular thing has some purpose or not, the question is whether the whole has a purpose or not. You are here. You had a purpose in coming here, that I know; without purpose you would not be here.

 

Jesus may have had a purpose, or you may think that he had a purpose. Christians may think that he had a purpose -- salvation was the purpose, to liberate humanity from the sin that Adam committed was the purpose. But this is your thinking. If Jesus is enlightened he cannot have any purpose, because purpose belongs to ignorance. He can only be in a play. And if he also thinks that whatsoever he is doing is very serious, purposive, then he belongs to the same business mind as you.

 

And the whole, the cosmos, cannot have any purpose, because purpose means something outside. There is nothing outside the whole. And whenever we think that God must have some purpose we are talking in deep absurdities, because if God has any purpose, he is omnipotent so he can do it immediately. Why waste so much time? If he has only this purpose -- that man should reach heaven -- he can simply order, "Go to heaven!"...

 

because when he can say, "Let there be light," and there is light; when he can say, "Let there be the world," and the world is there, then why can't he say, "Let there be only heaven," so that everybody is in heaven? Then why this whole nonsense of Adam committing sin, then Jesus helping people? Why this nonsense? Purpose is absurd in terms of the total. Purpose may exist for individual egos because egos cannot exist without purpose, but for the cosmic there is no ego. It cannot be anything else than a cosmic play.

 

Even Jesus' crucifixion is a play. That's why Jesus can go to the crucifixion so easily, not disturbed, as if it is just a drama, as if he is just acting a role. The man of knowledge is just an actor enacting a role. What is going to be the result is not his concern. Whatsoever the result, everything is good. There is neither good nor bad, there is neither in nor out, there is neither beginning nor end -- but this happens only when you have disappeared."

 

"You see a person and you smile. You smile for him. One should smile only for oneself. If others share, good. If nobody shares, good. But one should smile of one's own accord. One should not laugh to make somebody else happy, because if you are not happy, you cannot make anybody happy. Even if you are happy, it is very difficult to make somebody else happy because it depends on that somebody else as to whether he will accept it or not. One should simply laugh of one's own accord, and one should not wait for reasons to laugh. That too is absurd. Why wait for reasons? Life as it is should be enough of a reason to laugh. It is so absurd, it is so ridiculous. It is so beautiful... it is so wonderful. It is all sorts of things together. It is a great cosmic joke."