According to Osho, you weep when you can’t laugh because tears are the heart’s emergency language: when feeling is too intense—or laughter is culturally suppressed by lifelong seriousness—the energy still needs release, so it flows as tears. Tears may signal overflowing joy as much as sorrow. Unlearn repression, reopen your celebration passages, and allow both hearty laughter and full crying to cleanse and balance your being.
Your feelings get too big for laughs, and since you were taught to hold them back, they come out as tears instead.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, why do I always weep when I can't laugh? Isn't weeping opposed to dancing, singing and celebrating?
The phenomenon of weeping is mysterious. It does not mean that you are sad, not necessarily. It is not necessarily against celebrating, against cheerfulness, against laughing; no. The tears have a very strange function: whenever something in your heart is so much that it cannot be expressed by normal means, tears are an emergency method. So they may mean anything. You may be very happy, so happy that laughing will look stupid but tears will look perfectly right. Your tears will show that your happiness is not an ordinary happiness -- it is so deep that only tears can express it; it is so extraordinarily deep that an emergency method is used. Two friends meeting after many days, many years, may not feel like talking; talking may look too profane. They may like just to hug each other and weep on each other's shoulders. They are saying many many things...…
Osho, when I listen to you, every word sinks to the depths of my heart and stirs me. But when I read you, it remains a mental game. Please tell me why this happens.
It’s plain. The arithmetic is simple. When you read, only you are there; I am not. What you read is nothing but you. It becomes a game of the mind. When you listen to me, then sometimes—knowingly or unknowingly—I also slip into you. You seldom give such a chance, but now and then a lapse happens on your side. Unaware, you leave the door a little open—and I come in. So when you are hearing me, it’s a different matter. That is why truth has always been spoken, not written. It cannot be written. Even speaking it is very difficult, yet it can still be said—at least a little can be said, a little news can be given. Because in speaking, many elements are involved that are lost in writing. When you read a book, the book is dead. A book cannot create an atmosphere around you. A book has…
Osho, you make us laugh so much, but why do you yourself never laugh?
Veena, I laugh in solitude. Here, when I look at you, I feel like crying. The human condition is so wretched, so full of inner pain. It’s a wonder one is alive at all. So I can make you laugh, but I myself cannot. In solitude I do. When you are not there, when the very memory of you fades, when your faces are no longer before me, when your pain and your sorrow are forgotten—then I laugh. But before you, laughing is impossible. Those in whose breath no fragrance of flowers ever dwelt, who at playful buds have only ever cracked crude jests; in whose eyelid-gardens no butterfly was ever caught, on whose lips a smile never came, not even by mistake— if I could make such ill-starred ones laugh their fill, then I would laugh; I do laugh—let me get into the mood and I will laugh. Those…
Osho! While listening to you I start to weep. Now, even in the celebration of active meditation, tears burst forth. What is this? In the midst of meditation a feeling arises that this body is a hindrance now; how can it be shed—the feeling keeps growing more intense. Why? Please explain out of compassion.
Akshay Vivek! Human beings have been given such wrong conditioning that they have neither ever cried to their heart’s content nor laughed to their heart’s content. They have never really lived to their heart’s content. In no aspect, in no dimension, have they ever done anything totally; everything remains half-done! So many things hang inside, suspended like Trishanku. I say meditation is a celebration, but what is happening to you happens to others as well. While celebrating, suddenly tears arise from some unknown corner! They must have been suppressed somewhere—perhaps for lifetimes. Especially in men. Because from childhood we tell boys: Don’t cry! Girls cry. You are a man; crying is not for you. This is false. It is utterly false. Nature has made the tear glands in the eyes of men and women just the same. Men’s tear glands are not smaller than women’s. So one thing is certain—nature…
Osho, the moment I arrived here, intellect turned into heart and words into silence. While listening to you, my heart sometimes begins to flow as tears. I am doubtful whether this state will remain when I return home. Kindly explain how this state can be stabilized.
First thing: a human being has nothing more sacred than tears. There is no prayer greater than tears. People have known only one form of tears—tears of sorrow. But there is another form—tears of joy. Very few have known it; very few ever come to know it. When you see someone crying, you think he must be unhappy, in pain, wounded, burning. Not necessarily. Tears flow whenever any feeling becomes so intense that you cannot contain it—any feeling. If sorrow grows too much, it overflows as tears. If happiness grows too much, it too overflows as tears. Great pain flows out and lightens the heart through tears; great bliss also flows out as tears. So first, do not tie tears inextricably to sorrow. Deep down our minds have been conditioned to think tears come because of suffering. So we hide them, we hold them back. We try hard that tears…