According to Osho, when seriousness arises, don’t fight it—laugh at yourself immediately. Start mornings with a hearty, childlike belly laugh; throughout the day, give yourself laughs for no reason. This dissolves ego, restores proportion, and makes you light and transparent. Close your eyes, look for ‘seriousness,’ and you’ll find it vanishes in the spaciousness of laughter.
When you feel serious, playfully laugh at yourself with your whole body, and the seriousness melts away.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
You say that seriousness is a disease. Whenever I remember myself I feel serious, so what should I do?
Don't get serious about it. Let it be so, and laugh. If you can laugh at yourself, everything is okay. People laugh at others, but never laugh at themselves. It has to be learned. If you can laugh at yourself, seriousness is already gone. It cannot make its abode within you if you are capable of laughing at yourself. In Zen monasteries every monk has to laugh. The first thing in the morning to do is to laugh, the very first thing. The moment the monk becomes aware that he is no longer asleep, he has to jump out of bed, stand in a posture like a buffoon, like a circus joker, and start laughing, laughing at himself. There cannot be any better beginning of the day. Laughing at oneself kills the ego and you are more transparent, more light, when you move in the world. And if you have…
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?…
But certain things have been achieved only because some people have been -- maybe the word 'serious' it is not good, but, rather, 'intense'.
Someone has written me a letter. He writes that he believed in someone as if he was bhagwan, a God. For fifteen years continuously he believed in him. Then one day he saw that the man he had believed in was angry He writes that on that day not only did that man become just human -- not a God -- but from that day on "I cannot believe that any human being can ever be bhagwan, can ever be a God." I have written to him that there are two possibilities. "If one whom you believed to be divine became angry, there are two possibilities. Either this man is not divine -- or your definition of divine was wrong!" But no, your definition can never be wrong. This man who you thought was divine must be wrong. Your definition is more meaningful to you than fifteen years of faith…
Let the pendulum stay in the middle -- don't allow it to go to the right or to the left -- and when the pendulum stays in the middle, the clock stops. When your consciousness stays in the middle, time disappears ego disappears, mind disappears. You enter into a totally different world. A different dimension opens up: the dimension of eternity, the dimension of nirvana, the dimension of God. The secret is samata [The new sannyasin says when she meditates it is as if only the right hand side is lighted... she does not see well out of her left eye, either.] Don't be worried. In fact it is very rare to see the whole body full of light. It happens only at higher stages. In the beginning you see light only on one side and the other side remains in darkness.
Question: BELOVED MASTER, WHY DO I TAKE MYSELF AND EVERYTHING SO SERIOUSLY? Prembodhi, the ego can exist only if you take yourself and everything seriously. Nothing kills the ego like playfulness, like laughter. When you start taking life as fun, the ego has to die, it cannot exist anymore. Ego is illness; it needs an atmosphere of sadness to exist. Seriousness creates the sadness in you. Sadness is a necessary soil for the ego. Hence your saints are so serious, for the simple reason that they are the most egoistic people on the earth. They may be trying to be humble, but they are very proud of their humbleness. They take their humbleness very seriously. The real saint cannot be serious. The really religious person has to be a celebrant. Just look around... look at the trees -- are they serious?