Busyness

 

 

Everybody is interested in going out, nobody is interested in going in, because the moment you think of going in you think of many things that are there, hidden. YOU have suppressed them, nobody else, so you know well that anger is there, hatred is there, sex is there, greed is there, jealousy is there.... Thousands of things are bubbling and boiling and any moment they can explode. It is better to go out, not to go in. It is better to escape somewhere and you have tried many ways to escape.

 

People want to remain occupied. If they have nothing to do they will find something to do, something or other. They may start reading the same newspaper again. In the first place it was rubbish, so why are you reading it again? Nothing to do – and you would like to do something, because whenever you are not doing anything, suddenly the energy starts moving inwards. If it has something to cling to, only then can it remain out.

 

Sitting alone you feel restless. You want to go to the club, to the theater, or just to go and move in the market so that you are occupied. At least walking, looking at the shops, at the shop windows, or talking to people about absolutely nonsense things – neither you need to talk, nor do they want to listen, but people are talking and talking – somehow, something to cling to....

 

People are busy without business. And they may say that they would like to rest, but nobody wants to rest because if you rest really it automatically becomes a meditation and you start falling inwards. You start moving towards your inner center and fear grips you. You become afraid. So go to the market, go to the club, become a member of the Rotary Club, the Lions Club – thousands of stupidities exist all around for you to waste your time in.

 

Do something. And if you cannot find anything, or if to be a Rotarian is difficult, or you are not rich enough and you cannot go to the restaurant, you can go to the church, you can go to the mosque, you can go to the temple. They are at least free; there you can chant, “Hare Krishna, Hare Rama,” and get occupied. Or you can listen to a stupid priest who is repeating the same thing again and again. But at least you are occupied. Remain occupied. Go on moving outwards and cling to something exterior, because if you don’t cling, suddenly the energy starts moving inwards.

 

When people come to me and they ask, "How to meditate?" I tell them, "There is no need to ask how to meditate, just ask how to remain unoccupied. Meditation happens spontaneously. Just ask how to remain unoccupied, that's all. That's the whole trick of meditation -- how to remain unoccupied. Then you cannot do anything. The meditation will flower."

 

When you are not doing anything the energy moves towards the center, it settles down towards the center. When you are doing something the energy moves out. Doing is a way of moving out. Nondoing is a way of moving in. Occupation is an escape. You can read The Bible, you can make it an occupation. There is no difference between religious occupation and secular occupation: all occupations are occupations, and they help you to cling outside your being. They are excuses to remain outside.

 

Man is ignorant and blind, and he wants to remain ignorant and blind, because to come inwards looks like entering into a chaos. And it is so; inside you have created a chaos. You have to encounter it and go through it. Courage is needed -- courage to be oneself, and courage to move inwards. I have not come across a greater courage than that -- the courage to be meditative.

 

But people who are engaged outside with worldly things or nonworldly things, but occupied all the same, they think -- and they have created a rumor around it, they have their own philosophers -- they say that if you are an introvert you are somehow morbid, something is wrong with you. And they are in the majority. If you meditate, if you sit silently, they will joke about you: "What are you doing? -- gazing at your navel? What are you doing? -- opening the third eye? Where are you going? Are you morbid?... because what is there to do inside? There is nothing inside."

 

Inside doesn't exist for the majority of people, only the outside exists. And just the opposite is the case. Only inside is real; outside is nothing but a dream. But they call introverts morbid, they call meditators morbid. In the West they think that the East is a little morbid. What is the point of sitting alone and looking inwards? What are you going to get there? There is nothing.

 

-Osho, “Just Like That, #7“