h wrote:
Laughter is one of the things most repressed by society all over the worl=
d,
in all the ages. Society wants you to be serious. Parents want their
children to be serious, teachers want their students to be serious, the
bosses want their servants to be serious, the commanders want their armies
to be serious. Seriousness is required of everybody.
Laughter is dangerous and rebellious. When the teacher is teaching =
you
and you start laughing, it will be taken as an insult. Your parents are
saying something to you and you start laughing-it will be taken as an
insult. Seriousness is thought to be honor, respect.
Naturally, laughter has been repressed so much that even though life
all around is hilarious nobody is laughing. If your laughter is freed from
its chains, from its bondage, you will be surprised-on each step there is
something hilarious happening.
Life is not serious. Only graveyards are serious, death is serious.
Life is love, life is laughter, life is dance, song. But we will have to
give life a new orientation. The past has crippled life very badly, it has
made you almost laughter blind, just like there are people who are
colorblind. There are ten percent of people who are colorblind-it is a big
percentage, but they are not aware that they are colorblind.
George Bernard Shaw was colorblind, and he came to know it when he =
was
sixty years old. On his birthday somebody sent a present, a beautiful sui=
t,
a coat, but the person forgot to send a tie. So Bernard Shaw went with his
secretary to find a matching tie. He liked the suit very much. He looked =
at
ties and he chose one, and the secretary was surprised; she could not
believe it-because the suit was yellow and the tie was green. She said,
"What are you doing? This will look very strange."
He said, "Why will it look strange? It is the same color."
The manager, the salesman... they all gathered, and they tried in m=
any
ways to find out.... He could not distinguish between yellow and green; t=
hey
both appeared the same to him. He was colorblind. But for sixty years he =
was
not aware of it. And there are ten percent of people in the world who are
colorblind. Some color they are missing, or maybe they are mixing it up w=
ith
some other color.
The constant repression of laughter has made you laughter blind.
Situations are happening everywhere, but you cannot see that there is any
reason to laugh. If your laughter is freed from its bondage, the whole wo=
rld
will be full of laughter. It needs to be full of laughter; it will change
almost everything in human life. You will not be as miserable as you are.=
In
fact, you are not as miserable as you look-it is misery plus seriousness
that makes you look so miserable. Just misery plus laughter, and you will
not look so miserable!
[From Beyond Enlightenment , #27]
Next article: Life is not serious (Part 2)
Life, Love, Laughter is also available as an eBook.
Copyright =A9 2006 Osho International Foundation
stop posting from the future
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