You were taught to fight life and forget yourself; start by caring for your own joy and awareness, and fun will return on its own.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, why has life all along been a very serious affair for me, and not fun to live and enjoy and celebrate as you say it should be?
They said, "We have not done anything to him." And they were sitting by his side massaging his feet -- "Somehow, forgive us. We will never do anything like that again. We will simply love. We will never fall in love, we promise you. But please start eating, otherwise people will kill us. They are threatening us, saying to us `You are the cause.'" But do you know what rationalization Mahatma Gandhi had? He said, "You are not the cause. I am simply purifying my spirit. Because my own secretary falls in love, that means my soul is not pure. Something is impure in me; otherwise, how is it possible? It is inconceivable -- my own secretary, who lives with me twenty-four hours a day. It is not to punish you, it is to punish myself. I must be wrong; some impurity in my soul must have caused this." Strange.…
Osho, I have not got any interest in anything. It all seems to be meaningless. Nothing, excites, provokes or challenges me. There is no juice, no zest. I have felt like this all my life. Why should I do this or that when nothing fulfills me anyway? I am always trying to be joyful -- pretending to feel, to be excited, interested and alive. I am always trying to be courageous, to jump over some of my fears. But for what? I am tired I feel that "I am not" -- and even that I don't really feel. Osho, where am I?
Christians say he created the world exactly four thousand four years before Jesus Christ. Of course, it must have been a Monday he started; the week starts on Monday. But the question is, four thousand four years before Jesus Christ -- that makes only six thousand years... and what he had been doing for the whole eternity? Just vegetating? And if he could manage for the whole eternity, he should have managed for six thousand years more, because six thousand years are not much compared to eternity. Not even six moments... And if he had to create a world, he had to create this world? Maybe he was feeling lonely, but why so many people have to suffer for that? Let him feel lonely; he can commit suicide. But why so many people should suffer? And how he is feeling now? Very great? Because since then he has not been…
Osho, I had never even imagined that life could be lived so naturally, so joyfully. In the evening, in the singing group, I become so full of dance. The life I was seeking is coming to me. Where was I—and where are you taking me! However much gratitude I offer feels too little. Such love you are pouring, Osho, I bow at your feet!
Such is man’s condition. And the child learns from these very people—parents, family, neighbors, teachers, pundits and priests. From the surrounding crowd the child learns, and one teaching is inevitably absorbed—unconsciously, silently it sinks deep within: that life is suffering, that life is nothing but suffering. And then holy men are there to explain that life is pain, that the wheel of birth and death is suffering. Pundits and priests, temples and mosques, teach that life is the punishment for your sins, that because you sinned in past lives you have been given this life; life is a prison where you serve your sentence. And this seems to make sense, because all around there is evidence for it. If you see someone laughing, dancing, carefree and intoxicated with being, you think, “He must be mad!” Sensible people don’t behave like that. Sensible people don’t take up a tanpura and dance,…
Beloved Osho, we like life and its enjoyments and think that we belong to the halfhearted, yet we really don't want to go unless you kick us out.
Tomorrow never comes. It cannot come by its very nature; it is just a dream on the horizon. You can think about it but you cannot live it. It is a falsity. You think you are enjoying it? Rethink it, because I don't see it. I look inside you and I find you miserable there -- hiding it, but from whom are you hiding? And what is the point of hiding it? The more you hide it, the more it will become difficult to get rid of it; because the more you hide it, the deeper it goes. The deeper it goes, the more it poisons your very being; the very source of your life becomes more and more poisoned. Misery spreads. It becomes almost a part of you and then you don't know how to get rid of it. So the first thing: I am for life, all for…
I live in the land of seriousness, imprisoned in its borders. Can you draw me a road-map to your land of leela? Have I a defective gene? I cannot find my laughter or light-heartedness. I see it around me, but do not feel it in me.
And when the child is small, he is naturally dependent on the mother -- and mothers and fathers have exploited that dependence immensely. He is helpless, he cannot survive on his or her own; he HAS to look up to the mother and the father. His helplessness is exploited. He knows if the mother is gone, he will be dead. If the mother is no more available, he will be dead, he will not be able to survive. This idea goes on and on getting deeper and deeper.... And the mother helps it, because the mother enjoys the ego trip that "You cannot survive without me." She threatens many times, "Listen to me, otherwise I will leave and go forever, or I will die -- and THEN YOU will know!" And the child is shaken to the very roots -- he cannot survive without the mother. This becomes, by and…