Osho Quotes on Workaholics

Osho Quotes on workaholics

1. These are workaholics — addicted to work just as people are addicted to drugs. Work is their drug. It keeps them engaged. It keeps them away from their worries, it keeps them away from their tensions. It keeps them just like any drug: it drowns your worries, tensions, anxieties, sufferings, Christianity, God, sin, hell — everything is drowned. A miserable person suddenly starts laughing, enjoying.
2. The workaholics are against meditation. Every addiction is going to prevent you from becoming a meditator. All addictions have to be dropped. But to be total in your work is a totally different thing. To be total in your work is not addiction, it is a kind of meditation. When you are totally in your work, your work has a possibility of perfection, you will have a joy arising out of a perfect work. If you can be perfect and total in work, you can be total in no-work — just sitting silently, totally silent. You know how to be total. You can close your eyes and you can be totally in. You know the secret of being total.
3. A man who is total in his work is not a workaholic. He can be total — in anything, he will be total. He will be total while he is sleeping, he will be total while he is going for a walk. He will be just a walker, nothing else — no other thoughts, no other dreams, no other imaginations. Sleeping, he will simply sleep; eating, he will simply eat. You don’t do that. You are eating and your mind is doing hundreds of trips…. I have been seeing — in every bed there are never two people, but a great crowd. The husband is making love to his wife but he is thinking of Sophia Loren; the wife is not making love to her husband, she is making love to Muhammad Ali. In every bed you will find such a crowd! Nobody is total in any act, not even in love. So be total in everything that you do or do not do. Be total — then your whole life becomes a meditation.
4. This century is the first century which is suffering from sleeplessness. We have closed all the other doors; now we are closing the last door, the door of sleep. That seems to be the last disconnection from the universal energy — the greatest danger. And now there are foolish people in the world who are writing books, and with very logical acumen, saying that sleep is not needed at all, it is a wastage of time. They are right, it is a wastage of time. For people who think in terms of money and work, people who are workaholics, for them it is a wastage of time.
5. People who are obsessed with work, they have to be constantly on the go. They cannot rest, they cannot relax. Even when they are dying, they will be doing something or other. These people are now suggesting that sleep is unnecessary. They are suggesting that sleep is really an unnecessary hangover from the past.
6. Somehow one wants to remain engaged. That engagement may be with people, may be with work…. There are workaholics; they are afraid when the weekend comes close — what are they going to do? And if they don’t do anything, they are left to themselves, and that is the most painful experience.
7. Just as there are alcoholics, there are workaholics. They keep themselves continuously involved in some work; they cannot leave working. Holidays are fearful; they cannot sit silently. They may start reading the same newspapers they have read three times already that morning. They want to remain engaged, because it keeps a curtain between themselves and death. But reduced to its essentials, the only fear is of death.
8. Computers can give you a complete holiday for your whole life. You can relax. You will have to learn how to relax, because you have all become workaholics. For thousands of years, work, work, work hard! Computers will go against your whole conditioning about work. Laziness will become for the first time a spiritual quality: Blessed are the laziest, for theirs is the kingdom of this planet. And in their laziness, if they want, they can make beautiful gardens. It is just out of joy, for no purpose. They can paint, not to sell, but just to rejoice in the colors, the mixing of colors, the dance of colors. They can play music, not for any monetary reason, not as a business, but simply as a playful joy.
9. You cannot do anything better than existence is doing already. Simply leave yourself in the hands of existence. This relaxedness people have misunderstood always as laziness. It is not laziness. It looks like laziness to workaholics who cannot sit down, who have to do something because they are afraid the moment they stop doing something, they will have to know themselves. And that is their fear — who knows who they are? It is better to avoid the encounter. Relaxation is to be at ease.
10. In a simpler society, whatever is needful should be provided, should be produced. But so much is unnecessarily wasted. Man has no time to be himself, to be with himself or to be just silent, playing on the flute. It is true that we don’t need that conditioned mind which makes man almost a robot. The Japanese conditioning is that of a robot and so is the German conditioning of a robot. My own proposition is that we can create robots which can do all kinds of work and man should be freed to enjoy life, to love, to dance, to sing, to find new pleasures, new adventures, new challenges. There is so much beautiful literature — these potatoes will never know about it. There is such great music, such great poetry — these workaholics will never become aware, they don’t have time. And what they are producing is junk.
11. The world wants you to be extroverts — workaholics, it wants you to continuously work and work and work. The world has no need, apparently at least, of those who sit silently, doing nothing. They also are needed — immensely needed — but to see it needs great understanding. A man of silence, a man who can sit without any movement of his body or his mind, creates a certain vibration all around him which is very infectious. It helps people to be silent, to be relaxed. He is almost like an oasis in the desert. But because it is not visible, the world has never taken note of it.
12. The world needs workaholics. It needs people to be slaves, to be proletariats, to be laborers and function just like machines; hence all the so-called moralists and puritans have been teaching people that work has some intrinsic value. It has none. It has some value, but of the lowest kind. It is a need; because people have stomachs they need bread and butter. They need clothes and a roof over their heads. This natural need has been exploited to the extreme. People are forced to work, but whatever they produce does not come to them; it goes to the people who don’t work. The society has been forever an exploitive society. It has been divided into the haves and the have-nots. The have-nots have to work just to survive, and the haves go on accumulating mountains of money. It is a very ugly situation — inhuman, primitive, insane. The people who work are poor, hungry, starving; they don’t have time for literature, for music, for paintings. They can’t even conceive that there are worlds of tremendous beauty, of art. They cannot even imagine that there is something like meditation. It is enough for them to get one meal a day.
13. The Western mind has overpowered the whole world: we have become ‘workaholics’. And my whole approach is to help you to become zeros. The zero is the most perfect experience in life; it is the experience of ecstasy.
14. People move from one extreme to another: they exert too much, then they fall into a lethargy — or they become addicted to one extreme. A few people become addicted to too much work — what psychologists call ‘workaholics’. It is just like alcoholics: they become addicted to work. They cannot be without work, they have to do something. On the other extreme people become absolutely lethargic. When you are lethargic you lose all interest, zest, gusto. That is a kind of slow suicide. To be continuously in a strain is a suicide; to be continuously in lethargy is also a suicide — two different ways of killing oneself. The real person and the real life happens just in the middle where the pendulum simply does not move to any extreme; it swings no more. You cannot call this man lethargic because he will not be adverse to activity, and you cannot call him a workaholic because he is not addicted to work. He can happily remain without work.
15. If you enjoy sleep, it is far better than any examination, any education. Just accept the consequence of it, then there is no problem. Don’t hanker for things which only other people who are not lazy can get; then problems arise. You want all that workaholics are getting but you are lazy and you are not getting them. Then you are worried, you are pulled apart. That tension will be very destructive. Relax. If you can work two hours, good; three hours, good. A man does not need much. And everybody is capable of earning that much which is needed — food, clothes, shelter. Palaces you will not be able to make. This is my basic formula: accept and love it and you will not feel tired. You will be more full of energy than anybody; you will be overflowing with energy. Continue meditating; meditation will change things.