Work

 

 

Put your love into it, your whole awareness into it. Just don't do it for the money -- do it for love also. Do it with care, and then there is no need for any other meditation.

 

If you can change your work into meditation, that's the best thing. Then meditation is never in conflict with your life. Whatsoever you do can become meditative. Meditation is not something separate; it is a part of life. It is just like breathing: just as you breathe in and out, you meditate also.

 

And it is simply a shift of emphasis; nothing much is to be done. Things that you have been doing carelessly, start doing carefully. Things that you have been doing for some results, for example, money.... That's okay, but you can make it a plus phenomenon. Money is okay and if baking gives you money, good. One needs money, but it is not all. And just by the side if you can reap many more pleasures, why miss them? They are just free of cost.

 

You will be doing your work whether you love it or not, so just bringing love to it you will reap many more things which otherwise you will miss. So that is the plus thing. And it depends on you how much you can reap out of it. A very small work like baking can be of tremendous joy because food is very deeply connected with love. Love is food, and food is symbolic love. When a child starts his life, food and love start together. From the same breast of the mother flows love and food. In fact, it is very difficult to divide them, and the child knows love as food and food as love.

 

That's why all over the world, whenever you love a person, you like to invite him for food, because it is a love gesture. The host becomes the mother, he becomes motherly. It is very easy to approach people's hearts through food. Mm? business people understand it -- so the business lunch. It is easy to convince the person, it is easy to sell something, very easy, when you invite a person for food. Things happen easily. He is no more defensive. He is no more argumentative... a sort of rapport, mm? because the very food reminds him of his mother; unconsciously he again becomes a small baby, more innocent, more vulnerable.

 

When a woman loves you she will prepare food for you with tremendous care, and that food will have a spiritual value to it. It may not be possible scientifically to make any distinction between food prepared by love and food prepared carelessly, but spiritually there is a distinction. So when you are eating food that has been prepared with love, you will feel a certain rhythm between you and the food, a rapport. It somehow synchronises with you; it somehow melts easily and becomes one with you, it cooperates with your system. Food prepared carelessly is cold, it will take a longer time to absorb it, and food prepared with anger, hatred, jealousy, is already poisoned.

 

So do one thing: prepare whatsoever you are preparing -- cakes and that -- with deep love. Money is secondary. It comes anyhow, that's not the point at all. By the way there are beautiful flowers to be plucked; why waste the whole scene? People become too narrow in their vision and they simply look for results. There are many things just by the side, freely available, nobody asking any price for them, but people are so narrow they cannot see. They go on running like horses with blindfolds. If you can make that, it is beautiful. So make it your meditation. Good!

 

-Osho, "Dance Your Way to God, #13"