The Great Cosmic Joke Behind Enlightenment

The Great Cosmic Joke Behind Enlightenment

 

In Japan there is the beautiful story of a really great buddha, Hotei. In Japan he is called the Laughing Buddha, because the moment he became enlightened he started laughing.

People asked him, “Why are you laughing?”

He said, “Because I have become enlightened!”

“But,” they said, “we can’t see any relationship between enlightenment and laughter. What is the point of laughing?”

Hotei said, “I am laughing because I was searching for something which was already in me. I was searching the seeker; it was impossible to seek it. Where can you seek the seeker? How can you know the knower? It was like a dog chasing its own tail or you chasing your own shadow; you cannot catch hold of it.

It was so ridiculous, the whole effort was so absurd! That’s why I am laughing: I have always been a buddha! Now it looks very strange that for millions of lives I remained unconscious. It seems unbelievable how I went on missing myself. Now that I have known, a great laughter is arising in me.” 

And it is said he continued to laugh till his death; that was his only message to the world. 

~OSHO

The Great Cosmic Joke Behind Enlightenment

There is a joke that’s being played on you…and you don’t even know it. Are you ready for the punchline?

You are what you seek.

All the religious and spiritual seeking on this planet and you end up back at the beginning. If that’s not a fantastic joke, I don’t know what is! Everyone looks for happiness, peace, and fulfillment in the things of the world, but the truth is these things are part of our very nature. We don’t need to seek anything outside of ourselves.

Meditation masters and mystics throughout history have seen the joke of it: “I laugh when I think how I once sought paradise as a realm outside of the world of birth. It is right in the world of birth and death that the miraculous truth is revealed. But this is not the laughter of someone who suddenly acquires a great fortune; neither is it the laughter of one who has won a victory. It is, rather, the laughter of one who; after having painfully searched for something for a long time, finds it one morning in the pocket of his coat.” – 

~Thich Nhat Hanh

“You wander from room to room hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck!

Look past your thoughts, so you may drink the pure nectar of this moment.”

~ Rumi

If you have your glasses and you are looking all around for them, and then suddenly you become aware that they are sitting on your nose, it is impossible not to giggle, not to laugh😆😆😆😆. The spiritual experience is no different from that: It is just sitting on your nose -- and you are searching for it all over the world. You are missing it because you are searching all over the world. Just sit down, forget the world, and it is there. But because you never look withinwards...and you cannot find it anywhere outside -- neither on the Himalayan peaks nor on the moon -- naturally, failure after failure will make you serious, sad, as if you are not adequate enough, capable enough to find it. The truth is: you are not finding it because it is not outside you. So all paths are wrong. Wherever you go you will find failure and nothing else. Drop going, stop searching; be calm and quiet. Non-going is arriving~OSHO

🙏❤️💖💟💟