According to Osho, you take life so seriously because seriousness hides an inner emptiness and loneliness, flatters the ego with a fake sense of importance, and keeps you on the surface, avoiding the fear of meeting your own nothingness. Seriousness breeds problems out of trifles. His remedy: relax, laugh, be playful and nonserious—dare to face your inner silence and let the ego die.
You act serious to hide a scared, empty feeling and to seem important; try relaxing, laughing, and being playful so you can meet that feeling and be free.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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?
Beloved master, why do I continue to take myself and life in general so seriously?
Sufis function that way. Somebody is a weaver, somebody may be a potter, somebody may be making carpets. Do you know what Gurdjieff used to do in the West? His business was carpet selling He was a carpet salesman, that was his business. If you had seen him you would have never recognized that a great master was there. That's how the Sufis have existed, down the ages. They don't stand out, there is no need. It is always the ego that hankers for the peak, and it is the ego that does not allow you to live in constant joy. And constant joy is not a peak, remember. In fact it is more like peace than like bliss, more like peace. Bliss is there, but like a fragrance; you cannot catch hold of it. It is there, but very indirect, very subtle, very delicate. It is not a peak,…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, YOU ARE AGAINST SERIOUSNESS. YOU HAVE LAUGHED ABOUT EVERYTHING, INCLUDING GODS, GODMEN AND SCRIPTURES. HOW COME YOU THINK THAT PEOPLE SHOULD TAKE YOU AND YOUR TEACHING SERIOUSLY? Anand Maitreya, who has told you that I expect people to take me and my teachings seriously? I want to be understood joyously, not seriously. I want to be taken playfully, not seriously -- not with a long British face, but with beautiful laughter. Your laughter, your playfulness is the recognition that you have understood me. Your seriousness shows that you have misunderstood me, you have missed it -- because seriousness is nothing but sickness. It is another name of sadness; it is a shadow of death. And I am all for life.
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…
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…