According to Osho, life is inherently Leela—divine, purposeless play. Its truth doesn’t depend on belief: when you understand, you fall in step with the Vast and peace, music, and bliss arise; when you don’t, you suffer, out of rhythm. God, already complete, creates from overflowing energy, not goal. Drop seriousness and expectations; participate playfully in the cosmic dance.
Life isn’t a job with a goal; it’s a joyful game—stop forcing it and go with the flow.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, you have said: take life as Leela, a divine play. How? And if life is merely Maya, what is the need for this life?
Binding the infatuated with attachment, it ferries him across the mirage to the ocean. To this thousand-formed one I bowed my head and called her Rama-pervaded. Those who know will even bow to Maya—this too is His play. I tell you: don’t discard Maya; it is His shadow as well. The Beloved is dear, and His shadow is dear too. That is why I tell my sannyasin: no renunciation, no flight from the world. If you understand this shadow rightly, through this very shadow you will understand the One of whom it is the shadow. Yet I still say to you: lightly, lightly! Do not become grave and ponderous. For centuries, grave religion has committed great murder upon man. Temples turned gloomy; mosques, temples, churches became like cremation grounds. Do not become a renunciate. God is hidden in enjoyment—seek Him there. When you eat, seek Him somewhere in the taste.…
Osho, The Ultimate Reality has been called supreme consciousness and supreme wisdom. But when we see within it this circle of creation, then destruction, then creation again, and then destruction again, it feels very strange. Can you explain whether there is any cause, any meaning, any significance, any purpose behind this cycle?
But even as he says it, he does not see that he is contradicting himself. On the one hand he says, “Remove this terrible form and be pleased.” Pleasantness is also a mode of activity. And on the other hand he says he wants nothing to do with activity, he wants to know the essence. Pleasantness is not essence. Pleasantness too is a doing. Just as fierceness is a doing, pleasantness is a doing. Just as death is a doing, so too is life. Yet we keep choosing. He says, “Be cheerful, be joyful.” He probably believes joy is essence. It is not. Essence is emptiness—shunya. And to see shunya is very difficult. We only perceive activity. Where do we see emptiness? Only when emptiness takes on the form of activity does it come within our grasp. Otherwise, how can it be grasped? If I simply sit here in silence,…
It has been said that no desire, neither worldly nor religious, can lead towards freedom. But a positive imagination of happiness and bliss is also a sort of desire. Then isn't it true that imagination is also desire and hence creates tensions?
That is the meaning of the Indian concept of LEELA. God is playing; he is not engaged in work. This world is not utilitarian, it is just a play of energy. Energy enjoys itself playing; it divides itself and then plays the game of hide and seek. So, really, Indian seers have never said that God is the creator, they say that God is the player -- because the very word `creation' carries much seriousness about it, as if there is some end and something has to be achieved. God creating the world? This is absurd. Because it means that something is lacking, so God is creating the world to achieve something. Or it means that there is a future, so God also lives in desire. Jains and Buddhists could not understand the Hindu concept of LEELA, so they completely denied God. Because if God creates the world, then he…
Someone had tried with great difficulty to reach the sky—and someone struck, and everything lay on the ground! Buddha watched. The children kept fighting. Twilight came. The sun began to set. A voice called from the riverbank: your mothers are waiting—come home! Hearing this, the children leapt upon their houses, trampling them, destroying them, and ran home. Buddha stood watching. He said: the day we can see our whole life as a game of sand, and the day we hear the call that the real home is summoning, we too will demolish and go. They were just fighting: you toppled my house. Now, they break them themselves and run! When a man can make life a game like those children building in sand, he becomes unattached. For the Paramatma, life is play. Hence we have used the word Leela. It means play.
What is the purpose of life? Why should we practice yoga or any meditation technique or discipline? What should one's mission in life be?
Life is a mystery which cannot be solved. If it could be solved, it would not be a mystery. There is no mission in life, because there can be no mission in a mystery; there can simply be playfulness, a leela. This whole existence is just a play of energy. Play means something that is purposeless or something that is its own purpose. There is nothing to be achieved; the very act is the achievement. Life has no mission, because living itself is the achievement. So you can live in many ways, you can do many things. It is all just an outflow of energy, a purposeless cosmic play. That is why it is a mystery. The West is more intent on discovering new things than the East. It is more curious, more inquiring, but it could never develop a religious consciousness because it could never conceive of life as…