Laughter to welcome the New Year
It has become tradition – at the Osho Meditation Resort in Pune and in many Centers around the globe - to welcome the New Year with laughter.
This morning I remembered that for a whole year I had welcomed each single day with this beautiful laughter meditation - and so picked it up again. It is the simplest meditation of all, just ten minutes of laughter, for no reason at all. (And there is nobody to tell us that we cannot laugh in the shower or while cruising on the motorway…)
Laughter gives a whole new perspective to the whole day. How can I take my job so seriously? How can I get depressed looking out at the rainy sky, so dark it could be evening already? And it is so energizing: one cup of coffee will do for the rest of the day.
This reminds me now of the jokes Osho used to tell us in the middle of his discourses, to wake us up and to show the hilarity of our behavour – the best antidote to the seriousness into which a spiritual discourse inevitably falls. (In his last discourses the jokes were even used as a preparation for our evening meditation…)
We – the audience – used to send him the jokes. There was a period when even three blokes had the job to find new ones or re-write old ones – and the highlight of my days with Osho was hearing him read one of the jokes I had made up.
And this now reminds me that I have never introduced you to “my” website: www.punyajokes.com
“My” in inverted commas as I am only the collector. The jokes have just come my way, first from Jeevan from Osho Times in Pune and later from my colleagues at IBM and now we have quite a big collection which you can browse when in the need of a boost of laughter or as a start for the laughter meditation (did anyone say you are not allowed to do this meditation in the afternoon at your desk?).
(Please note that the jokes on the website are not the jokes Osho has used in his discourses.)
by Punya, Jan 2007
