According to Osho, when people move toward inner peace, industriousness doesn’t fade—it becomes more skillful, efficient, and creative. Peace supports right action, while restlessness obstructs it. As peacefulness grows, the world’s work improves in quality and compassion: like Kabir’s cloth or Buddha’s tireless service, serene minds produce finer results and sustain ceaseless, considerate activity in society, not escapism.
More inner peace means better, kinder work—not laziness.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, if everyone moves toward inner peace, won’t industriousness be lost?
The suffering in the world—if everyone were to attain inner peace, the problem would dissolve, and action would only become better. A peaceful mind can act far better than an agitated or deranged one. Peace is not opposed to action; restlessness is opposed to action. Whatever a restless person does will be unskillful, because restlessness obstructs action. Whatever a peaceful person does becomes skillful, because peace supports action. So in my view, if peaceful people increase in the world, the world’s efficiency will increase. Take Kabir—he kept weaving cloth. It is said no weaver ever made such cloth. When he brought his fabric to market, people would rush to it as if mad. To purchase Kabir’s cloth was itself a joy. People would say, “No one has ever woven cloth like this,” and Kabir would reply, “No one has woven, with such peace and for God, as I do. What…
One indisputable point: if everyone abides in the soul, rests in peace and bliss, then grain will no longer be produced in the world. Will the whole world perish?
It was from the hands of a blacksmith that the Buddha’s death came. He had been invited to a meal at the blacksmith’s house. In Bihar—those mushrooms that spring up in the rains—poor people dry them and later cook them as a vegetable. The blacksmith was poor. He cooked them and served the Buddha. Sometimes they are poisonous; they spring up anywhere. From that poison pain spread through the Buddha’s body. When he returned home—from there to his lodging—he saw that venom was spreading in the body. He said, “Go, tell that blacksmith: you are exceedingly blessed that the Tathagata accepted his last meal from you. Go tell him he is exceedingly blessed that the Tathagata accepted his final food from him! Such good fortune is very hard to obtain. So go say this—and beat the drum throughout the village—that no one should trouble him after my passing. Tell Ananda:…
Osho, when I listen to you, every word sinks to the depths of my heart and stirs me. But when I read you, it remains a mental game. Please tell me why this happens.
It’s plain. The arithmetic is simple. When you read, only you are there; I am not. What you read is nothing but you. It becomes a game of the mind. When you listen to me, then sometimes—knowingly or unknowingly—I also slip into you. You seldom give such a chance, but now and then a lapse happens on your side. Unaware, you leave the door a little open—and I come in. So when you are hearing me, it’s a different matter. That is why truth has always been spoken, not written. It cannot be written. Even speaking it is very difficult, yet it can still be said—at least a little can be said, a little news can be given. Because in speaking, many elements are involved that are lost in writing. When you read a book, the book is dead. A book cannot create an atmosphere around you. A book has…
Another friend has also asked the same question in this regard. They have asked: Osho, if people go deep into meditation and become quiet, what will happen to the household, the family, the shop, the business—what will become of all that?
What is their condition right now? The household, the wife, the children, the shop, the business—what is their state as they are? Is it really all in such great shape? Could it get any worse than this? Yet we are terribly frightened. The hell we ourselves have created—one person calls it “family,” another “business,” another something else—about this very hell we panic that we might end up with nothing but hell! The business will not vanish. Nor will the wife, nor the family. Sons and daughters won’t disappear. But this hellish arrangement we have erected—that will certainly dissolve. New forms will appear. To love a woman is one thing; to tie her down in the house as a “wife” is quite another. The urge to bind happens precisely because there is no love. If there is love, the urge to bind cannot function. There is fear: “If I don’t bind,…
A friend has asked: Osho, if meditation brings peace to life, then why does it not spread across the whole country?
We teach children: anger is bad, anger is a sin, don’t be angry. The result is not that they stop being angry—that cannot happen. The anger only remains incomplete, never allowed to run its full course; they never fully experience the pain of anger; they never pass through its fire. And then the question of non-anger does not arise; the search for peace does not begin. One who has not even been truly unpeaceful—how can he become peaceful? One who lacks even the capacity to be fully unpeaceful—how will he have the capacity to be peaceful? These things may sound upside-down, but I tell you: only the one who can be thoroughly unpeaceful can truly set out on the path to peace. One who, by getting angry, lives anger through and through—who is pierced by all its thorns, who is singed in its flames—one who drinks anger to the dregs…