Yor are against seriousness
DELETED TEXT AND CHAPTERS ARE MARKED IN RED AND ADDED TEXT HAS BEEN MARKED IN BLUE
LIFE’S MYSTERIES
The Osho Upanishad
Chapter #39
Chapter title: Don’t say goodbye, say good morning
27 September 1986 pm in
Archive code: 8609275
ShortTitle: UPAN39
Audio: Yes
Video: Yes
Length: 121 mins
BELOVED OSHO,
YOU ARE AGAINST SERIOUSNESS. YOU HAVE LAUGHED
ABOUT EVERYTHING, INCLUDING GODS, GODMEN AND
SCRIPTURES. HOW COME YOU THINK THAT PEOPLE
SHOULD TAKE YOU AND YOUR TEACHING SERIOUSLY?
You are against seriousness. You have laughed
about everything, including gods, godmen and
scriptures. How come you think that people
should take you and your teaching seriously?
Anand Maitreya, w Who has told you that I expect people to take me and my teachings seriously? I want to be understood joyously, not seriously.
I want to be taken playfully, not seriously– — not with a long British face, but with a beautiful laughter.
Your laughter, your playfulness is the recognition that you have understood me. Your seriousness shows that you have misunderstood me, you have missed it– — because seriousness is nothing but sickness. It is another name of sadness; it is a shadow of death. A and I am all for life. If it is needed for your laughter, your dance, even to reject me, then reject me– — but don’t reject the dance and the song and the life, because that is my teaching.
Why should you take me seriously?
And that’s why I am not taking anybody seriously. Still you don’t understand: I am not taking anybody seriously simply to make it clear to that you that you are not supposed to take me seriously either. Laugh about me, enjoy me, rejoice in me– — but for God’s sake, don’t be serious!
Seriousness has killed humanity. It has proved to be the very cancer of the soul.
My only contribution to human evolution is a sense of humor. No other religion, no other philosophy has accepted attempted humor as something religious; it seems to them that it is something profane.
To me, humor is the most sacred experience in life.
And there is enough to prove it: except man, no animal in the whole existence has a sense of humor. Can you expect a buffalo to laugh? Can you expect a donkey to have a sense of humour? The moment your saints become serious, they fall into the category of buffaloes and donkeys: they are no longer human, because this is the only special quality that human consciousness has. It shows that only at a certain point of evolution does humor manifest itself.
And the higher you go, the more playful will be your approach towards life and its problems. It will not be a burden, it will be a joy to solve them. Life will not be a sin– — these are the serious people who have made life a sin– — life will be a reward, a gift.
And those who are wasting life in seriousness are being ungrateful to existence.
Learn to laugh with the flowers and the stars, and you will feel a strange weightlessness coming into your being… as if you have grown wings and you can fly.
–From The Osho Upanishad, Discourse 39