Let there be laughter throughout the new year!
Those who have been reading Osho’s books, or listening to his discourses, know one person for sure and that is Mulla Nasruddin. Osho dedicated most of his jokes to him. In ancient times of the Arabian world, Mulla Nasruddin was projected as a very wise man who shared his wisdom with the people with his jokes, unlike other mullahs and priests. That’s the reason he has been loved and adored so much down the centuries. In modern times, Osho revived him again, added thousands of jokes to this ancient mystic’s name, and spiced up profound commentaries on all the mystics of the East and the West.
The Blue Planet Journal describes Mulla Nasruddin as an idiot and a great mystic; he is a fool, a saint, a teacher, and a beggar. He has moments of stupidity, moments of irreverence, and moments of wisdom; he snatches victory from the jaws of certain defeat, and sometimes defeat from certain victory. Like all of us, he is a mystery and a paradox.In one of the talks, a disciple asked Osho: “Did Mulla Nasruddin become enlightened.”
This question is relevant because most of us think that enlightenment happens only by being seriously into the practice of meditation, sadhana, and tapascharya. Osho has turned it around by pointing out that seriousness is a disease, not health. One needs to laugh more, dance more, and rejoice in life so totally, that enlightenment happens naturally by itself, as a flower blooms naturally.
Osho responded and asserted: “He must have — because if he is not enlightened then nobody can be….Mulla Nasruddin is a Sufi figure, one of the oldest figures of Sufi anecdotes, and he shows whatsoever I have been saying here: that the world is a cosmic joke — he represents that. He is a very serious joker, and if you can penetrate him and understand him, then many mysteries will be revealed to you. Mulla Nasruddin illustrates that the world is not a tragedy but a comedy. And the world is a place where if you can learn how to laugh you have learned everything. If your prayer cannot become deep laughter that comes from all over your being, if your prayer is sad and if you cannot joke with your god, then you are not really religious.
Osho embellished the old jokes and made them very juicy and really hilarious. Mulla Nasruddin constantly irritated his friends with his eternal optimism. No matter how bad the situation, he would always say, “It could have been worse.”To cure him of this annoying habit, his friends decided to invent a situation so completely black, so dreadful, that even Nasruddin could find no hope in it. Approaching him at the club bar one day, one of them said, “Mulla, Did you hear what happened to George? He came home last night, found his wife in bed with another man, shot them both, then turned the gun on himself!””Terrible,” said the Mulla “But it could have been worse.””How in hell,” asked his dumbfounded friend, “could it possibly have been worse?””Well,” said Nasruddin, ” if it have had happened the night before I would be dead now.”
And one more joke:
Once Mulla Nasruddin was gossipping with his friend and inquired about his life with his wife. The friend said: I am not happy with my wife. I want to divorce her as she has not spoken to me for several months.
“I’d think twice if I were you, my dear friend,” said the Mulla. “Wives like that are hard to find these days.”
Swami Chaitanya Keerti
