According to Osho, enjoyment is hard because joy and the ego cannot exist together: when you are (seeking attention, asserting 'I'), joy vanishes. From childhood we’re conditioned to trade misery for attention, so we invest in suffering. Learn to 'die' to the ego moment-to-moment, drop the need for attention, see these mind-tricks, and joy naturally flowers.
Joy shows up when you forget yourself and stop trying to get attention; if you cling to your ‘me,’ you keep misery instead.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Why is it so difficult to enjoy?
That's the reason why people were against Jesus and against Buddha, and why they are against me. They would like me also to be fasting, living under a tree like a beggar, then they would be very happy. They would come in thousands, they would worship me. But if I live in my own way -- and my way is the way of the feast, my way is the way of festivity -- then they are shocked. They are perfectly happy if somebody leaves the palace and becomes a beggar. They are perfectly happy -- they love the man. But if a beggar moves into the palace, they will all be against him. They will not like the idea at all. Just watch. You also do such things. If a man is Lying on a bed of thorns, immediately you prostrate yourself as if he were doing something great, as…
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.…
Why do I feel hesitation in enjoying anything?
Joy is not allowed; you are preconditioned against joy. From the very childhood you have been taught that if you are happy then something is wrong -- unhappy, everything is good. If you are miserable nobody is worried about it, but if you are too happy, everybody is worried about you. You must have done something wrong. Whenever a child is happy the parents start looking for the cause: he must have done some mischief or something. Why is he so happy? -- the parents are not happy. They have a deep jealousy towards the child because he is happy. They may not be aware of it, but they are jealous. It is easy to tolerate somebody else's misery, but it is almost impossible to tolerate anybody else's happiness. I was reading an anecdote. A very religious father was bringing up his son as perfectly as possible. One day when…
Have I come here to enjoy myself or get enlightened? Does one need to suffer to become enlightened? I seem to fluctuate between the two. I'm very confused.
First, become joyous! And Jesus goes on saying it, but nobody listens. He says again and again: Rejoice! Rejoice! I say AGAIN rejoice! You ask: HAVE I COME HERE TO ENJOY MYSELF OR GET ENLIGHTENED; You have come here to get enlightened, as far as you are concerned. As far as I am concerned, you have come here to enjoy. But through enjoyment comes enlightenment, and through enlightenment just suffering. These are all ego trips. You find beautiful names, that's all, but they are all ego trips. Now, you want to become enlightened. Why? For what? From where did you get this idea of enlightenment? And this will create much suffering, because now you will be searching. What to do? Stand on your head to become enlightened? Fast to become enlightened? Go to the mountains to live in a cave? Become a masochist -- to torture yourself? Practise a thousand…
Another friend has asked, Osho, if the soul leaves the body, can it also enter another dead body?
It can. But there is no meaning or purpose in entering another dead body. Because that body died precisely because the soul living in it had become incapable of remaining there. That body had become useless; that’s why it was left. There is no purpose in entering such a body. Still, the possibility of entering another body does exist. But it is not a valuable question to ask how to enter someone else’s body when we don’t even know how we are sitting in our own. What benefit can we gain by pondering the futile idea of entering another’s body? We do not know how we ourselves entered this very body. We don’t know how we live in our own body. We have no experience of separating from our own body and seeing ourselves. There is no purpose in entering another’s body. Yet, scientifically one can say it is possible…