CAN YOU TALK TO US MORE ABOUT CELEBRATION?
IS IT POSSIBLE TO CELEBRATE MISERY?

It is possible because celebration is an attitude. Even about misery you can take an attitude of celebration.
For example: you are sad - don't get identified with sadness. Become a witness and enjoy the moment of sadness, because sadness has its own beauties. You have never watched. You get so identified that you never penetrate the beauties of a sad moment. If you watch, you will be surprised at what treasures you have been missing.
Look - when you are happy you are never so deep as when you are sad. Sadness has a depth to it; happiness has shallowness about it. Go and watch happy people. The so-called happy people, the playboys and playgirls - in clubs, in hotels you will find them, in theatres - are always smiling and bubbling with happiness. You will always find them shallow, superficial. They don't have any depth. Happiness is like waves juSt on the surface; you live a shallow life. But sadness has a depth to it. When you are sad it is not like waves on the surface, it is like the very depth of the Pacific Ocean: miles and miles to it.

Move into the depth, watch it. Happiness is noisy; sadness has a silence to it. Happiness may be like the day, sadness is like the night. Happiness may be like the light, sadness is like darkness. Light comes and goes; darkness remains - it is eternal. Light happens sometimes; darkness is always there. If you move into sadness all these things will be felt. Suddenly you will become aware that sadness is there like an object, you are watching and witnessing, and suddenly you start feeling happy. Such a beautiful sadness! - a flower of darkness, a flower of eternal depth. Like an abyss without any bottom, so silent, so musical; there is no noise at all, no disturbance. One can go on falling and falling into it endlessly, and one can come out of it absolutely rejuvenated. It is a rest.

It depends on the attitude. When you become sad you think that something bad has happened to you. It is an interpretation that something bad has happened to you, and then you start trying to escape from it. You never meditate on it. Then you want to go to somebody: to a party, to the club, or put the T.V. on or the radio, or start reading the newspaper - something so that you can forget. This is a wrong attitude that has been given to you - that sadness is wrong. Nothing is wrong with it. It is another polarity in life.

Happiness is one pole, sadness is another. Blissfulness is one pole, misery is another. Life consists of both, and life is a ritual because of both. A life only of blissfulness will have extension, but will not have depth. A life of only sadness will have depth, but will not have extension. A life of both sadness and blissfulness is multi dimensional; it moves in all dimensions together. Watch the statue of Buddha or sometimes look into my eyes and you will find both together - a blissfulness, a peace, a sad ness also. You will find a blissfulness which contains in it sad ness also, because that sadness gives it depth. Watch Buddha's statue - blissful, but still sad. The very word 'sad' gives you wrong connotations - that something is wrong. This is your interpretation.

To me, life in its totality is good. And when you understand life in its totality, only then can you celebrate;

Celebrate, whatsoever the case. If you are sad, then celebrate because you are sad. Try it. Just give it a try and you will be surprised -- it happens. You are sad? -- start dancing because sadness is so beautiful, such a silent flower of being. Dance, enjoy, and suddenly you will feel that the sadness is disappear ing, a distance is created. By and by, you will forget sadness and you will be celebrating. You have transformed the energy.

This is what alchemy is: to transform the baser metal into higher gold. Sadness, anger, jealousy -- baser metals can be transformed into gold because they are constituted of the same elements as gold. There is no difference between gold and iron because they have the same constituents, the same electrons. Have you ever thought about it, that a piece of coal and the greatest diamond in the world are just the same? They don't have any difference. In fact coal pressed by the earth for millions of years becomes a diamond. Just a difference of pressure, but they are both carbon dioxide, both constituted of the same elements.
The baser can be changed into the higher. Nothing is lacking in the baser. Only a rearrangement, a recomposition is needed. That is the whole of what alchemy means. When you are sad, celebrate, and you are giving a new composition to sadness.
...

If you change your sadness to celebration, then you will also be capable of changing your death into resurrection. So learn the art while there is still time. Don't let death come before you have learned the secret alchemy of changing baser metals into higher metals. Because if you can change sadness, you can change death. If you can be celebrating unconditionally, when death comes you will be able to laugh, you will be able to celebrate, you will go happy. And when you can go celebrating, death cannot kill you. Rather, on the contrary you have killed death. But start it, give it a try. There is nothing to lose. But people are so foolish that even when there is nothing to lose, they won't give it a try. What is there to lose?

If you are sad, then I say celebrate, dance, sing. What are you to lose? At the most, sadness will be lost, nothing else. But you think it is impossible. And the very idea that it is impossible will not allow you to give it a try. And I say it is one of the most easy things in the world, because energy is neutral. The same energy becomes sadness; the same energy becomes anger; the same energy becomes sexuality; the same energy becomes com passion; the same energy becomes meditation.
Energy is one.
You don't have many types of energies. You don't have many separate pockets of energy where this energy is labelled 'sadness' and this energy is labelled 'happiness'. Energies are not pigeon-holed, they are not separated. There exists no watertight compartment in you. You are simply one. This one energy becomes sadness, this one energy becomes anger. It is up to you.
One has to learn the secret, the art of how to transform energies.

Osho, The Alchemy of Yoga