Rajneesh Quotes

I don't believe in being serious about anything. I think life is too serious to be taken seriously.

Humor and laughter - not necessarily derogatory derision - are my pet tools. This may come from my general philosophy of never taking the world too seriously - for fear of dying of boredom.

Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.

Life is much too serious to be taken seriously.

Life is not to be taken seriously.

I think too many people take life too seriously. I'm having a ball!

Before I was a Discordian, I took life much too seriously. When you take life too seriously you start to wonder what the point of it all is. When you wonder what the point is in life, you fall into a trap of thinking there is one. When you think there is a point, you finally realize there is no point. And what point is there in living like that? Nowadays I skip the search for a point and find, instead, the punch lines.

Life is too short to make an over-serious business out of it.

Play doesn't have to be a frivolous thing. You may think of a Beethoven symphony as something serious, but it's still being played. I think Oscar Wilde said that life is too important to be taken seriously.

I don’t take my life seriously, but I do take what I do – in my life – seriously -

Take life easily, lovingly, playfully, non-seriously. Seriousness is a disease, the greatest disease of the soul and playfulness the greatest health.

... the way we view death determines, to a surprising degree, the way we live our lives.

The ego can exist only if you take yourself and everything seriously. Nothing kills the ego like playfulness, like laughter. When you start taking life as fun, the ego has to die, it cannot exist anymore. Ego is illness; it needs an atmosphere of sadness to exist. Seriousness creates the sadness in you. Sadness is a necessary soil for the ego. Hence your saints are so serious, for the simple reason that they are the most egoistic people on the earth. They may be trying to be humble, but they are very proud of their humbleness. They take their humbleness very seriously.

I don't see what's so triffic about creating people as people and then gettin' upset cos' they act like people", said Adam severely. "Anyway, if you stopped tellin' people it's all sorted out after they're dead, they might try sorting it all out while they're alive.

You can deny, if you like, nearly all abstractions: justice, beauty, truth, goodness, mind, God. You can deny seriousness, but not play.

Dyin' ain't much of a living, boy.

A man of knowing attains to a sense of humour. Let this always be remembered. If you see someone who has no sense of humour, know well that that man has not known at all. If you come across a serious man, then you can be certain that he is a pretender. Knowing brings sincerity but all seriousness disappears. Knowing brings a playfulness; knowing brings a sense of humour. The sense of humour is a must.

The cynics are correct the sense of freewill is only that feeling which we have when we take the necessitated option that most appeals to us.

I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.

On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough.

The world stands on absurdities, and without them perhaps nothing at all would happen.

Regardless of the staggering dimensions of the world about us, the density of our ignorance, the risks of catastrophes to come, and our individual weakness within the immense collectivity, the fact remains that we are absolutely free today if we choose to will our existence in its finiteness, a finiteness which is open on the infinite. And in fact, any man who has known real loves, real revolts, real desires, and real will knows quite well that he has no need of any outside guarantee to be sure of his goals; their certitude comes from his own drive.

The difference between a non-suicide and an ex-suicide leaving the house for work, at eight o'clock on an ordinary morning: The non-suicide is a little traveling suck of care, sucking care with him from the past and being sucked toward care in the future. His breath is high in his chest. The ex-suicide opens his front door, sits down on the steps, and laughs. Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive. It is good to be alive. He goes to work because he doesn't have to.

In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing.

After you publish a book, you become a writer and you're supposed to take it very seriously. You're supposed to show up at your desk - although frankly, I don't have a desk, I write in bed - you're supposed to show up at your bed and produce work. I think it's a little bit like work. I like to have fun with it, do things like make silly book trailers. I don't want to take this too seriously.