According to Osho, even laziness can be a path—if it is your true nature. Spiritual growth begins from authenticity: only truth leads to truth. The genuinely lazy can let rest, sleep, and non-doing become a doorway to receptivity. But if you are naturally active, choose the path of action—work joyfully and offer your doing to the Divine; forced idleness breeds misery.
If you're really lazy, rest with awareness; if you're not, act with joy and offer your work to something higher.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, you said there is a path even through laziness. How so? I too am lazy; please shed a little light.
I used to think only Sheela was a Das Maluka. Are there others too! In fact, there must be many; Sheela must have a large family. But pay attention: if you are truly lazy, even laziness can become a path. The point to watch is—are you really lazy? This happened in Japan. An emperor was very lazy. Naturally he thought, “I am an emperor, I am lazy, nothing obstructs me; but those who are poor and lazy must be in great difficulty.” He thought, “If I weren’t an emperor, what trouble I would be in! I don’t earn, I can’t earn—I don’t even get up from my bed. Often I simply lie there with my eyes closed. I eat and then sleep; then get up, eat again, and sleep again.” So he thought, “I am an emperor, fine—but surely there must be other lazy people in this land; what must…
The lectures on zen delight me to no end. I feel myself falling in tune with it more and more. But it seems so easy. Am I becoming lazy? I thought spirituality is supposed to be arduous -- not a free and easy let-go.
The MAHAYANA story is that Buddha, after six years, came to realize that all effort is meaningless. Truth cannot be achieved by achieving, because in the very idea of achieving, ego remains -- the achiever remains. Understanding this, he dropped the very idea. He forgot all about achievement, he relaxed. He said: 'No more.' He had dropped out of the world one day; money, power, prestige -- he had dropped those goals. Then he had put all his energies into one goal -- enlightenment, NIRVANA. Now he saw the point, that this is again an ego-goal, again an ego-trip: 'I am again trying to achieve something.' Seeing this, he must have laughed. He dropped that idea too; he relaxed. That night a young woman had come to worship the tree. She was a worshipper of the tree, a pagan. And it was a full-moon night and she had come with…
Osho, I am extremely lazy. I am frightened—how will liberation happen? Please guide me!
I saw his pictures in the newspapers. In every picture—now he is naked; no newspaper will agree to print that, and they themselves must feel shy, the devotees too must feel a little shame—so in all the photos he is sitting with a very large scripture on his knees to hide his nakedness. My dear fellow, a loincloth would have sufficed—what harm in that? A loincloth would be lighter than that huge book, simpler too! Tie a simple strap. Why sit with a massive volume—just to hide a small thing! But once we have a belief, we do not see the absurdity. In Jain homes, pictures of Mahavira hang. They paint them so that Mahavira stands in meditation and a tree branch serves as a loincloth. Why trouble the poor man! I was a guest in a house. The picture was beautiful, but that one branch spoils everything—dense leaves covering…
In my childhood I never liked to do anything. I would simply sit and sometimes I would be sitting just in front of my mother, and she would say, 'Nobody seems to be in the house' -- because she wanted somebody to go to the market and fetch something for her and I would be just sitting in front of my mother! (laughter) But it was almost inconceivable that I would go to the market, so they all thought, 'This man is lazy.' My grandfather used to say, 'I'm very much worried about you. Who is going to feed you? How are you going to earn a living?' And he was right... his worry was right. But I accepted that. That's perfectly okay. When you are lazy, you are lazy.
And he asks: Lazy people possess the quality of ineptitude, yet their spiritual growth doesn’t seem to happen.
What is Buddha doing sitting under the Bodhi tree? He is sunk in supreme laziness. He is doing nothing; he has dropped doing. What have renunciates done for centuries? They have dropped doing. Sannyas itself means: one has left behind the whole world of doing, the world of commotion; one has sat down empty. The East understood this, and the East has given great respect even to its idlers. You may not realize it: the word we have, buddhu (blockhead), comes from Buddha. If someone is sitting idle at home, we say to him, “Why are you sitting like a buddhu?” That carries the old memory that we know Buddha once sat empty under the Bodhi tree for years. Even today we say, “Why are you sitting like a buddhu! Get up, do something.” We have forgotten that this word came from Buddha. But the feeling hidden behind the word…