According to Osho, don’t reconcile joy with others’ suffering—be total with whatever is present. If joy arises, be wholly joyous; when you meet misery, feel it wholly, cry, sit with the person, help if you can, and refrain from consoling theories like karma. Remember our deep interconnectedness and act responsibly so you don’t add to poverty. Totality in each moment—joy or sorrow—opens compassion and right action.
Be fully happy when happy, and fully caring when others hurt—feel, help if you can, and don’t hide behind excuses.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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…
Osho, I cannot accept happiness. It seems sorrow appeals to me. Yet I want happiness. When happiness comes, I can’t trust it. When happiness comes it feels like a dream. Please untangle my confusion!
Keep three things in mind. First, wherever in sorrow you have tied your vested interests, recognize them. Do not derive even the slightest profit from suffering; otherwise happiness will never be yours. Do not give sorrow a place in your life—by any excuse, any pretext. Uproot the weeds of suffering from the garden of your life; only then can roses bloom. And be very alert. For centuries sorrow has been taught. Your saints and sages tell you life is suffering. Your priests say you must suffer the fruits of sins from past lives—someone has to bear them. Endless ideas are thrust upon you for one purpose only: to make your suffering seem natural, inevitable. Supports are placed under your sorrow. Remove all supports and suffering collapses. These props you’ve leaned against—kick them away. You are not suffering the karmic fruits of past births—fruits don’t take that long! They are immediate.…
Beloved Osho, it seems that unhappy moments are the only times in which I can feel some joy.
It is from Anand Anshumali. So have it your own way. Joy is good, I am all for joy. If you feel joy only when you are unhappy, then have it -- have as much of it as possible. But this is a morbid kind of joy, a perversion. See the perversion of it, it is masochism. There are people who feel happy only when they hurt themselves, when it really hurts like hell. Then they know they ARE. Then they know they are, they exist. Pain makes them a little alert of themselves. But this is getting into a wrong track. These tracks are available. There are people who feel joy only when they are unhappy -- this is only one part. There are people who feel very unhappy when they have joy -- that is another part of the same perversion. If Anshumali goes on growing in the…
Osho, at times I feel I am on the very peak of life. It seems that everything—the whole mystery of life—has been found. But then, in certain moments, I also experience a very dense sadness and helplessness. I cannot grasp what my real problem is.
As long as there are peaks, there will be valleys. As long as there is the longing for the peak, you will have to endure the melancholy of the valleys as well. One who has asked for pleasure has, along with it, asked for pain. And when pleasure comes, pain enters with it like a shadow. We change the names of our pleasures, but we do not become free of pleasure; and the one who is not free of pleasure will not be free of pain. Ashtavakra’s entire teaching is just this: be free of duality. Only the one who is free of duality arrives. The peak you think you have reached is the illusion of arrival—because there is no peak to arrive at. Arrival is a vast plain—neither height nor depth. Arrival is like a scale that has balanced: both pans exactly equal and the needle at rest. Or…
So, witnessing hasn’t happened yet, has it!
He would begin to speak. Then he would feel, “No, now speech will not do,” and he would fall silent. Then he would feel, “Silence also is not making it understood,” and he would stand and begin to dance. And what could not be understood by his speaking would be understood by his dancing. And his speech need not be believed, but in his dancing many would join and begin to dance. And the whole of Ramakrishna’s being would begin to speak. So I am not eager to teach you any scientific method. Christianity made that mistake. It trained all its monks and preachers in scientific methods; that is why a Christian pastor speaking from the pulpit today is as hollow as it gets—no one is so hollow. Because it should be your being that speaks, not a method. Yes, if someone has a natural scientificness, that is different; otherwise…