According to Osho, laughing is hard because we’ve been conditioned by “serious” religions and moralists to mistrust joy, suffocating our natural sense of humor. True spirituality is life-affirming: when you drop borrowed solemnity and look within, you touch the innate bliss—the seeker is the sought—and laughter flowers. A religious man must laugh; without total laughter, you haven’t understood existence’s mystery.
It’s hard to laugh because we were taught to be too serious; drop that training, look inside, and natural joy makes laughter easy.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, about four years ago I was in a space which I always remember as "paradise on earth." it felt as if I'd arrived home. Being in such deep and sweet relaxation and love, I felt as if I had fallen deep inside myself. Beloved Osho, why is it so difficult for me to let myself rejoice like that again?
Don't ask for anything to be repeated in your life, because there are always higher things. Why waste your life with anything lower? Always ask for the higher, for the better. And of course, you don't know what is higher and what is greater; again you are just waiting for the unknown. Just as the unknown has given you a gift in the past, it will be giving you many, many gifts; but you have to have the same childlike innocent heart -- waiting and longing, but not definite about what you are asking. Just trust in existence, and you will find better spaces. There is no scarcity of paradises -- there are paradises beyond paradises -- one has just to be innocent and not cling to anything. You are clinging to a certain experience, and that very clinging is becoming a barrier to prevent another experience from happening. If…
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?…
Osho, kindly elaborate the phrase "in the bad company of yogis and sadhus."
I tell you to be just ordinary, Because to try to he extra. ordinary is a very ordinary thing -- everybody wants that. And just to be ordinary, accept it, is very extraordinary because no. body wants it. I would like you to be just ordinary, so much so that nobody recognizes you as somebody in particular, so much so that you can be lost in the crowd. You will have a total freedom of being; otherwise you have to continuously hold yourself up. Then you are continuously on display -- and that becomes a tension, that creates seriousness, that becomes a heavy burden. There is no need to be continuously in the show window. You can relax, you can laugh. I allow you everything that is human. All that is human is yours. Laugh like human beings. Cry, weep, like human beings. Be ordinary. If you remain ordinary the…
Osho, you constantly tell your sannyasins to keep laughing. But in the locket of the mala you give at initiation, your picture shows a serious expression. Why this seriousness?
Ashtavakra says: to know that state, one needs the same state. Christians say Jesus never laughed. That is false. Yet the Christians are also right, because on the plane on which they can understand laughter, Jesus never laughed. On the plane on which I understand laughter, I know Jesus was bubbling with laughter—he was laughing even on the cross. Have you seen a laughing statue of Buddha? Impossible. Have you heard Mahavira’s titter? Impossible. If you make a laughing statue of Mahavira, the Jains will sue you and drag you into court, saying you have disfigured our Mahavira’s face. Mahavira—and laughing? It cannot be! In one sense they are right too: a Mahavira like you would never laugh. Your laughter bears the imprint of tears. Mahavira’s laughter is very silent, serene—serene like Mahavira himself, without any disturbance. Perhaps there is no giggling in it—there cannot be. It rises from emptiness;…
There have been people who have made them established because they serve their vested interests. All the priests around the world have been trying to make man serious, sad, sombre, a long face. They are all afraid of laughter -- laughter is really dangerous, it is almost like a dynamite. If the world, even for twenty-four hours decides that "We will laugh at everything" (laughter) -- just twenty-four hours -- and all your politicians will commit suicide, and all your priests will jump into the ocean, and all your saints will hang themselves. Just within twenty-four hours there will be such a great revolution in the world. It will be such a deep cleansing phenomenon, it will clean all dirt.