Osho's letters to his beloved disciples...


REST IS WORK

Work is rest. And the rest is relaxation - no past, no future. Osho shatters the myths about work and rest, fathers and sons, past and future in this extract from 'A Cup of Tea'.

Love.
Rest is the supreme goal, work is the medium.
Total relaxation, with complete freedom from
effort, is the supreme goal.
Then life is a play, and then even effort becomes
play.

Poetry, philosophy, religion are the fruits of
repose.
This has not been available to everyone
but technology and science will make it so in the
near future.
That is why I am in favour of technology.

Those who attribute intrinsic value to labour
oppose the use of machines -- they have to.
For me, labour has no such intrinsic value: on the
contrary, I see it as a burden.
As long as work is a prerequisite for rest it
cannot be blissful.
When work flows out of a state of rest voluntarily
then it is blissful.
So I cannot call rest a sin.

Nor do I support sacrifice.
I do not want anyone to live for anybody else, or
one generation to sacrifice itself for another.
Such sacrifices turn out to be very costly -- those
who make them expect an inhuman return.
This is why fathers expect the impossible from
their sons.
If each father lives for his son who will live for
himself?
For every son is a potential father.
No, I want everyone to live for himself -- for his
own happiness, his own state of rest.

When a father is happy he does much more for his
son -- and easily, because it comes out of his
happiness.
Then there is neither sacrifice nor renunciation;
what he does comes naturally out of his being a
father --
and a happy father at that.
Then he has no inhuman expectations of his son and
where there is no pressure from expectations,
expectations are fulfilled -- out of the son being a
son.

In short, I teach each person to be selfish.
Altruistic teachings have taught man nothing but
suicide. and a suicidal man is always homicidal; the
unhappy sow their sorrow amongst others.

I am also against the sacrifice of the present for
the future, because what is is always present; if you
live in it totally the future will be born out of it --
and when it comes it too will be the present.
For he who has the habit of sacrificing the present
for the future the future never comes because whatever
comes is again always sacrificed for that which has not
yet come.

Finally, you ask why i too work for others and for
the future.
First of all, I do not work.
Whatever I do flows out of my state of rest.
I do not swim, I just float.
No one can ever do anything for another
but if something happens to others out of what I
am,
that is something else,
and there too I am not the doer.

As for the future --
for me, the present is everything.
And the past too is also a present -- that has
passed away;
and the future too -- that is a present that is yet
to come.
Life is always here and now
so I do not bother about past and future.
And it is amazing that ever since I stopped
worrying about them they have begun to worry about me!


Osho
A Cup of Tea