A false silence is always forced; through effort it is achieved. It is not spontaneous, it has not happened to you. You have made it happen. You are sitting silently and there is much inner turmoil. You suppress it and then you cannot laugh. You will become sad because laughter will be dangerous -- if you laugh you will lose silence, because in laughter you cannot suppress. Laughter is against suppression. If you want to suppress you should not laugh; if you laugh everything will come out. The real will come out in laughter, and the unreal will be lost.
So whenever you see a saint sad, know well the silence is false. He cannot laugh, he cannot enjoy, because he is afraid. If he laughs everything will be broken, the suppression will come out, and then he will not be able to suppress. Look at small children. Guests come to your home and you tell the children, "Don't laugh!" -- what do they do? They close their mouths and suppress their breath, because if they don't suppress their breath then laughter will come out. It will be difficult. They don't look anywhere, because if they look at something they forget. So they close their eyes, or almost close their eyes, and they suppress their breath.
If you suppress, your breath cannot be deep. Laughter needs a deep breath; if you laugh, a deep breath will be released. That's why nobody is breathing deeply, just shallow breathing, because much has been suppressed in your childhood and after it you cannot breathe deeply. If you go deeper you will become afraid. Sex has been suppressed through breath, laughter has been suppressed through breath, anger has been suppressed through breath. Breath is a mechanism to suppress or release -- hence my insistence on chaotic breathing, because if you breathe chaotically, then laughter, screaming, everything will come up and all your suppressions will be thrown out. They cannot be thrown out in another way, because breathing, breath, is the way you have suppressed them.
Try to suppress anything: what will you do? You will not breathe deeply; you will breathe shallowly, you will breathe just from the upper part of the lungs. You will not go deeper because deeper it is suppressed. In the belly, everything is suppressed. So when you really laugh the belly vibrates; hence, Buddha's big-bellied portraits. The belly is relaxed, and then the stomach is not a suppressed reservoir. If you see a saint sad, sadness is there, but the saint is not there. He has stilled himself somehow and is every moment afraid. Anything can disturb him.
Nothing can disturb if real silence has happened. Then everything helps it to grow. If you are really silent you can sit in a market, and even the market cannot disturb it. Rather, you feed on the noise of the market and that noise becomes more silence in you. Really, to feel silence a market is needed -- because if you have real silence, then the market becomes the background and the silence becomes perfect in contrast. You can feel the inner silence bubbling against the market.
There is no need to go to the Himalayas. And if you go, what will you see? Against the silence of the Himalayas your mind will be chattering. Then you will feel more chattering, because the background is in silence. The background is the silence, and you will feel more chattering.
If the real happens to you and you are unafraid, it cannot be taken away. Nothing can disturb it. And when I say nothing, I mean nothing -- nothing can disturb it. And if something does, it is forced, it is cultivated; somehow you have managed it. But a managed silence is not silence, it is just like a managed love.
The world is so mad. The parents, the teachers and the moralists are so mad and insane that they teach children to love. Mothers say to their children, "I am your mother, love me," -- as if the child can do something to love. What can the child do? The husband goes on saying to the wife, "I am your husband, love me," as if love is a duty, as if love is something which can be done. Nothing can be done. Only one thing can be done -- you can pretend. And once you learn how to pretend love, you have missed. Your whole life will go wrong. Then you will go on pretending that you love. Then you will smile and pretend; then you will laugh and pretend. Then everything is false. Then you will sit silently and pretend; then you will meditate and pretend. Pretension becomes the style of your life.
Don't pretend. Let the real come out. If you can wait and be patient enough, when the pretensions have dropped the real will be waiting there to explode. Catharsis is to drop the pretenses. Don't look at what the other is saying because that is how you have pretended, how you have been pretending.
You cannot love -- either it is there or not -- but the mother says, "Because I am your mother..." and the father says, "I am your father..."and the teacher says, "I am your teacher, therefore love me," -- as if love is a logical thing.
"I am your mother, therefore love me." What will the child do? You are creating such problems for the child that he cannot conceive of what to do. He can pretend. he can say, "Yes, I love you." And once the child loves his mother as a duty, he will become incapable of loving any woman. Then the wife will come and it will be a duty; then the children will come and it will be a duty; then the whole life will become a duty. It cannot be a celebration, you cannot laugh, you cannot enjoy. It is a burden to be carried. This is what has happened to you. It is a misfortune, but if you understand it you can drop it.
This is the key -- the inner part of it is silence, and the outer part of the key is celebration, laughter. Be festive and silent. Create more and more possibility around you -- don't force the inner to be silent, just create more and more possibility around you so that the inner silence can flower in it. That's all we can do. We can put the seed in the soil, but we cannot force the plant to come out. We can create the situation, we can protect, we can give fertilizer to the soil, we can water, we can see whether the sunrays reach or not, or how much sunrays are needed, whether more or less. We can avoid dangers, and wait in a prayerful mood. We cannot do anything else. Only the situation can be created.
That's what I mean when I tell you to meditate. Meditation is just a situation; silence is not going to be the consequence of it. No, meditation is just creating the soil, the surrounding, preparing the ground. The seed is there, it is always there; you need not put in the seed, the seed has always been with you. That seed is Brahma; that seed is atma. -- that seed is you. Just create the situation and the seed will become alive. It will sprout and a plant will be born, and you will start growing.
Meditation doesn't lead you to silence; meditation only creates the situation in which the silence happens. And this should be the criterion -- that whenever silence happens laughter will come into your life. A vital celebration will happen all around. You will not become sad, you will not become depressed, you will not escape from the world. You will be here in this world, but taking the whole thing as a game, enjoying the whole thing as a beautiful game, a big drama, no longer serious about it.
Seriousness is a disease.
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