According to Osho, celebration is the spontaneous fragrance of your own being—your natural state—recovered when you drop the false mask of misery and remember yourself. Life is leela, divine play, not seriousness. A master only mirrors your original face, provoking this remembrance; the joy is yours. Wherever self-remembering happens, there is Kaaba/Kashi: song, dance, freshness—celebration independent of circumstances or persons.
Celebration is what naturally appears when you remember your true self and let go of sadness—life is a playful game, and a master just helps you see your own joy.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, wherever you are, there is a festivity and celebration. What is this wonderful phenomenon?
Narendra, festivity and celebration are our natural states; you have just forgotten them. When you come to me, you suddenly remember that there is no need to be sad, no need to be miserable, that life wants you to sing and dance, that life is not serious, but playfulness. The ancient seers used to call it leela; that word can only be translated as 'playfulness'. It is God's playfulness. You just have to be reminded. Anybody who knows it... being close to him, you see your face in his mirror. And suddenly there is a remembrance, and your misery disappears -- because your misery is false, your sadness is false. Celebration is your truth. It has nothing to do with me; it is just that in my presence you forget for a moment your false mask of misery. Suddenly you-feel-a joy, a cheerfulness, a fragrance arising in you. It is…
And you have asked: “What is celebration?”
A very false form of vitaragata has become prevalent in this country—negational, negative, life-denying, celebration-denying. It teaches shrinking, not spreading. I teach you to expand. I hold that becoming vast is the way to come near Brahman. Our word “expansion” is itself a form of the word “Brahman.” Brahman means that which keeps on becoming vast, whose vastness knows no end—spreading and spreading. Bliss is expansion; misery is contraction. You have experienced it: when you are miserable you shrink completely. When you are miserable, you shut the doors and windows and lie in a corner. You want no one to meet you, no one to speak, no one to see you, and that nothing be seen. In great misery a person even commits suicide. That too is only the final device of contraction. One shrinks so much that one will no longer see the sun’s light, nor people’s faces, nor…
What is the essence of celebration?
That's what we are doing here, and you are asking about the essence. Why not have a taste of it yourself? But mind is such, it makes questions out of everything: "What is celebration?" Rather than dancing, rather than laughing, rather than loving, rather than enjoying this silence, the mind asks: "What is celebration?" Mind is something like a tree on which questions grow, and you answer one question and out of that one question, another question will come up. Everybody knows what celebration is. I have never come across a person who does not know what celebration is. Just rejoicing in your being, just rejoicing in this moment, this tremendous universe. You had not asked for it, you have simply been given a universe which is infinite and eternal. You have not asked and you have been given a consciousness which is eternal, which can become festive. If you…
Osho, when should a person celebrate joy? When is celebration appropriate?
The emperor couldn’t make sense of what to do next. Chuang Tzu had said something astounding: with whom he had seen the colors of life—joys and sorrows, ups and downs—who had been like his shadow every moment, should he not even be able to bid her farewell with a song? That would be ungrateful. This is my gratitude, my “ah!”—I am only expressing my thankfulness. If you seek occasions for joy, you will never find them. If you know how to be joyful, every occasion is an occasion; every season a season. Every moment you will discover some device. What a marvelous man Chuang Tzu must have been—at such a moment he found a reason to play the tambourine! One should be such a person. So I say to you: celebrate every moment. “When is celebration appropriate?” Every moment is appropriate. Because only when you are in celebration are you…
Can you talk to us more about celebration? Is it possible to celebrate misery?
But when you are angry, you can't think of dancing. When you are sad, you can't think of singing. Why not make your sadness a song? Sing, play on your flute. In the beginning the notes will be sad, but nothing is wrong with a sad note. Have you heard, in the afternoon sometimes, when everything is hot, burning hot, fire all around, and suddenly from a mango grove you can hear a cuckoo start singing? In the beginning, the note is sad. She is calling her lover, her beloved, on a hot afternoon. Everything is fiery all around, and she is hankering for love. A very sad note, but beautiful. By and by, the sad note changes into a happy note. The lover starts responding from another grove. Now it is no more a hot afternoon; everything is cooling down in the heart. Now the note is different. When…