Work as meditation

Work as meditation

WHENEVER you feel that you are not in a good mood and you don’t feel good in the work, before starting work, just for five minutes, exhale deeply. Feel with the exhalation that you are throwing your dark mood out and you will be surprised, within five minutes you will be suddenly back to normal and the low will have disappeared, the dark is no more there.

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 your work 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 would miss.

Anyone engaged in creative work can make their livelihood a meditation in the way Osho describes here in answer to a question from a painter.

 Art is meditation; any activity becomes meditation if you are lost in it, so don’t just remain a technician. If you are just a technician then painting will never become a meditation, you have to be crazily into it, madly into it, completely lost, not knowing where you are going, not knowing what you are doing, not knowing who you are.

This state of not knowing will be meditation; let it happen. The painting should not be painted but only allowed to happen – and I don’t mean that you just remain lazy, no, then it will never happen. It has to ride on you, you have to be very very active and yet not doing it. That is the whole knack, that is the whole crux of it: you have to be active and yet not a doer.

Go to the canvas. For a few minutes just meditate, just sit silently there before the canvas. It has to be like automatic writing. You take the pen in your hand and you sit silently and suddenly you find a jerk in the hand and it is not that you have done it, you know that you have not done it. You were simply waiting for it. The jerk comes and the hand starts moving, something starts happening.

 That way you should start your painting. A few minutes meditation, just being available. Whatsoever is going to happen you will allow to happen. You will bring all your expertise into letting it happen.

Take the brush and start. Go slowly in the beginning, so that you don’t bring yourself in. Just go slowly. Let the subject start flowing through you on its own accord and then be lost in it. And don’t think of anything else. Art has to be for art’s sake, then it is meditation. No motive should be allowed to enter into it. And I’m not saying that you are not going to sell your painting or you are not going to exhibit it; that is perfectly OK but that is a by-product. That is not the motive. One needs food so one sells the painting, but it hurts that one sells it; it is almost like selling your child. But one needs to so it is OK. You feel sad, but it was not the motive; you had not painted it to sell. It has been sold – that is another thing – but the motive is not there, otherwise you will remain a technician.

You should get lost. You need not remain there, you should completely disappear into your painting, into your dance, into breathing, into singing. In whatsoever you are doing you should be lost completely in un-control.