According to Osho, laughter is the spontaneous release of accumulated energies that build up through daily repression. When understanding dawns, those pent-up energies discharge as laughter; it may look hysterical, yet it is actually healing relief, preventing real hysteria and madness. Society’s control stifles expression; instead, consciously allow and channel laughter and other energies creatively to restore balance and sanity.
Laughing lets stuck feelings out safely when you finally “get it,” so you don’t explode inside.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, when I heard you say laughter is a small release from our misery, my mind would not compute. It felt as though hysteria was filling the room as we all laughed, and I am still asking myself, "what happened?"
You can see what happened! It can look like hysteria. For example, when you understand something and laughter happens as a relief from misery, a great energy is released. Every understanding releases accumulated energies in you. For example, you are not laughing the whole day -- only once in a while. You are not being loving the whole day -- only once in a while. What happens to the energy in the big gaps? It accumulates, and if you come to an understanding of a certain phenomenon there is a great release, and the release is so strong that it will feel hysterical. But it is not hysterical; it is really getting relief from energy which could have become hysterical any moment. You can find people in madhouses laughing for hours, laughing so much that tears come to their eyes. They are mad because they could not manage to release…
Beloved Osho, it is for the first time I have been so close to you. When I am sitting here with you I feel my heart in tune with your heart, I feel a deep love for you. But I also feel my outer seriousness. Why is laughter so difficult for me?
The sardar said, "Don't force me, because the secret is very embarrassing." They said, "Embarrassing? But we thought you are doing great. We always hear laughter -- either you laugh or your wife laughs... no fight." The sardar said, "What happens is, she throws things at me. If she misses, then I laugh; if she hits me then she laughs. The same things are going on, but it is just that we have made a different arrangement -- what is the point? So I have learned how to dodge her, and she is learning how to...." After twenty years the same sardar wanted to divorce his wife. The magistrate had heard about them, that this was the only couple in the whole city who had never been known to fight. They simply laugh -- the whole city knows them as the laughing couple. The magistrate said, "What has gone wrong?…
Osho, I laugh so much at your jokes. I would like to ask one question: why does a joke create so much laughter?
ONE THING: you have never been allowed to laugh; your laughter is repressed. It is like a repressed spring -- any excuse is enough and it comes out. You have been taught to be sad, long faces; you have been taught to be serious. If you are serious, nobody thinks that you are doing something wrong; it is accepted, it is the way things have to be. But if you are laughing, laughing too much, then people will start feeling embarrassed by you. They will start thinking something is weird:'Why is this man laughing'?" And if you are laughing without any reason, then you are mad; then they will take you to the psychiatrist; then they will hospitalize you. They will say, "He laughs without any reason! Only mad people laugh without any reason." In a better world, in a more civilized world, in a really civilized world, laughter will…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, DOES LAUGHTER BELONG TO EVERY STAGE? Now try to understand the mechanism of laughter, how it happens. If I tell a joke, why do you laugh? What happens? What is the inner mechanism? If I tell a joke, expectation is created, you start expecting. Your mind starts searching for what the end is going to be, and you cannot conceive the end. A joke moves in two dimensions: first it moves in a logical dimension, you can conceive it. If the joke goes on being logical to the very end there will be no laughter. Suddenly the joke takes a turn and becomes illogical, something which you could not conceive. And when the joke takes a turn and the result becomes illogical, the expectation, the tension that was created in you, suddenly explodes. You relax, laughter comes out of you.
In the tang dynasty there was a stout fellow who was called the happy chinaman, or the laughing buddha.
THIS HOTEI HAD NO DESIRE TO CALL HIMSELF A ZEN MASTER, OR TO GATHER DISCIPLES AROUND HIM. INSTEAD HE WALKED THE STREETS WITH A SACK ON HIS BACK FULL OF CANDY, FRUIT AND DOUGHNUTS -- WHICH HE GAVE OUT TO THE CHILDREN WHO GATHERED AND PLAYED AROUND HIM. WHENEVER HE MET A ZEN DEVOTEE HE WOULD EXTEND HIS HAND AND SAY: "GIVE ME ONE PENNY." AND IF ANYONE ASKED HIM TO RETURN TO THE TEMPLE TO TEACH OTHERS, AGAIN HE WOULD REPLY: "GIVE ME ONE PENNY." ONCE WHEN HE WAS AT HIS PLAY-WORK ANOTHER ZEN MASTER HAPPENED TO ALONG AND INQUIRED: "WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ZEN?" HOTEI IMMEDIATELY PLOPPED HIS SACK DOWN ON THE GROUND IN SILENT ANSWER. "THEN," ASKED THE OTHER, "WHAT IS THE ACTUALIZATION OF ZEN?" AT ONCE THE HAPPY CHINAMAN SWUNG THE SACK OVER HIS SHOULDER AND CONTINUED ON HIS WAY. You have turned life into…