Question – Do you never get tired of Talking? Why do you talk regularly every morning? Don’t you feel like going for a holiday sometimes?
Osho – I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN GOD. The Christian God created the world in six days and the seventh day He rested; hence, the Sunday is the holiday. ‘Holiday’ means the holy day, God’s day of rest.
In the East we have never known any God resting. The very idea is stupid: God and resting? Rest is needed if what you are doing is not of your heart; then you get tired. When it is out of your heart and out of your love, you don’t get tired; in fact, you get nourished by it.
Talking to you, I feel nourished. After talking to you I feel more energy than ever — because it is my love. I enjoy it! It is not work. You can get tired if you are working. If you are playing, how can you get tired? Nobody has ever heard that people get tired by playing. In fact, when people are tired by work, they go to play as a rest — they relax. Six days they have been working in the office, in the factory, in the market; the seventh day they go to fish, or they go for golf — they play. They invite friends for a picnic; they go trekking in the hills. That is rest. To me, every day is a holiday. If you love whatsoever you are doing, you are never tired of it; it is nourishing, it is energy-giving, it is vitalizing.
But I can understand the question. The question is from Yoga Chinmaya — his whole concept of work is wrong. He works very reluctantly. He tries hard to avoid work. He finds out ways and means to escape from work. He goes on postponing and he will always be ready there with excuses why his work is being postponed. He does not love it. Hence the question. The question is not concerned with me — always remember — the question is yours, not mine. It shows something about you.
Mulla Nasrudin was saying to me one day: “Osho, do you know the difference between a French woman, an English woman and a Jewish woman’s reaction when she is kissed in bed by her husband?”
I said, “No, I don’t know — you tell me.”
He said, “The French woman says: ‘Oo la la, Pierre, your kisses are oo la la.’
“The English woman says, ‘Jolly well done — I say, Winston your kisses are jolly well done!’
“The Jewish woman says, ‘You know, Sam, the ceiling needs painting.'”
It depends how you look at things…. Now, Yoga Chinmaya is like a Jewish woman. His outlook towards life is not that of a delighted consciousness. He is simply avoiding. He simply goes on finding as many excuses as possible. The energy that he puts into finding excuses will be enough to do the work. And then he feels guilty and ashamed.
Work is worship. Work is prayer. While I am talking to you, it is a prayer to me, it is worship. You are my temples, my gods. Whatsoever I am saying, I am not saying just to teach something. Teaching is a by-product, a consequence. Whatsoever I say to you is a prayer — it is love, it is care. I care about you; I care as much as a painter cares about his canvas.
Have you ever heard about Van Gogh being on a holiday? Have you ever heard about Picasso being on holiday? — yes, you must have heard. He used to go for many holidays, but always with his canvas and brush; on the holiday also he would be painting. It was not a holiday from painting.
When you love something, there is no holiday — and then all your days are holidays. Each day to me is a Sunday, full of light — that’s why I call it Sunday. Each day to me is a Sunday because it is full of holiness. Chinmaya’s attitude towards work is that of a utilitarian. It is not playful. He is worried about the work, tense about it. That too has a reason: he is a perfectionist — and perfectionism is the root cause of all neurosis. A perfectionist is a neurotic person; sooner or later, he will create more and more neurosis around him.
I am not a perfectionist. I don’t bother a bit about being a perfectionist. I am a wholistic person. I like things in their wholeness, but I never bother about their perfection. Nothing can be perfect in the world — and in fact nothing should be perfect in the world, because whenever a thing is perfect it is dead.
One poet used to live with me for a few years. He would write, rewrite, again cancel it, rewrite again — for days on end he would polish his poems. And by the time he would feel it was perfect, I would declare it was dead.
The first glimpse was something alive — it was not perfect, there were flaws in it. Then he went on improving it, removing all flaws, bringing more and more metre, grammar, better language, better words, better sounding words, more music. For months he would polish and change, and by the time he thought it was right to go to the press I would declare, “Now, you send it to the doctor for a post mortem — it is dead! You killed it.”
Watch: perfectionist parents always kill their children. Perfectionist saints kill themselves and kill their followers. It is very difficult to live with a perfectionist saint — he is boring, monotonous, and condemning. Whenever you go to him he will be looking from his perfectionist attitude, and you will be reduced below your humanity. And he will enjoy condemning you — you are a sinner. This is wrong, that is wrong — everything is wrong.
I am not a perfectionist. I accept you with all your human frailty, with all your human flaws, with all your human limitations. I love you as you are. I am not saying be lousy — that is another extreme. That means you don’t care at all what you do. A perfectionist cares too much — he is not worried about the work, he is worried about the perfection. He has an ideal to fulfil. And the lousy person does not care at all. With the lousy person the poem will never be written, and with the perfectionist it will be written a thousand and one times — and by the time he declares that he is satisfied, the poem will be dead.
Just between the two somewhere is the wholistic approach. Don’t be lousy, don’t be a perfectionist — be human! Chinmaya has developed ulcers in the stomach because of his perfectionist attitude. He becomes too much worried; he has to do everything as perfectly as possible — it is an obsession. When it is an obsession, then of course you get tired, deadly tired of it. You want to avoid it, because once you take any work in your hands you will go mad, you will become obsessed.
One needs balance. Balance is sanity, and balance is health. I am not tired at all. And if any day I am tired, I will not talk to you — because I will never enforce anything on myself. I don’t enforce anything on you, how can I enforce anything on myself? If I am tired then it is finished! If I don’t feel like speaking, then I can stop in the middle of my talk, or even in the middle of a sentence — I will not complete it, remember. The moment I feel that I am tired, it is an indication, a sure indication, that now I have to stop. And I will not wait for a single moment to stop. That’s how I live. I don’t enforce anything on myself. Whatsoever is natural is good. Easy is right!
Source – Osho Book “The Discipline of Transcendence, Vol 3″