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Laughter is the best
medicine. 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 inner
energy to the fore. 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.
When you really laugh, suddenly, the mind disappears.
And the whole
Zen methodology is how to get into no-mind.
Dancing and laughter are
the best, natural, easily approachable doors to
attaining no-mind. 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.
Before the mind disappears
there open two alternatives: sleep or sushupti, samadhi
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 practiced it long. If you live 60 years, for 20
years you have been asleep. It is the greatest activity
that you have been doing; one-third of your life is
spent in sleep. 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. It will be
difficult, living in a family set-up, to suddenly laugh
early in the morning. But do try it; it's worth getting
out of bed laughing. Yes, for no reason at all. Isn't it
good to be alive?
One day you will not get up
in the morning. One day the milkman will knock at the
door, the spouse 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!
Look at the whole
ridiculousness of it and have a good laugh. Laughter
leads to more laughter. And almost always I have seen
people doing just the wrong thing. From early morning
they get out of bed complaining, gloomy, sad, depressed,
and 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.
In their insanity, Zen
people are saner than you are. They start the day
laughing. 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 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 with you even
the trees and stones and stars.
(Compiled by Swami
Chaitanya Keerti, Osho World Foundation, New Delhi)
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