According to Osho, a hobby is a pseudo-occupation - an escape from yourself you adopt when ordinary work stops. Unable to face inner aloneness, you rush into "foolish" busyness and call it relaxation, yet it only exhausts you. Instead of collecting distractions, learn to be unoccupied: sit silently, meditate, and taste the bliss of simply being.
A hobby is busywork we use to avoid being quietly with ourselves; try just sitting still and breathing instead.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
What is preoccupation?
PREOCCUPATION IS PREJUDICE, preoccupation is pride, preoccupation is past. Preoccupation means you come loaded in the moment, you don't see the case that is there. You look through coloured eyes. For example, if you are hearing me here, and you are hearing through a curtain -- you have your beliefs, you have your ideas, you have your conditionings, your teachers, your parents, your society, your religion, your church are all standing there -- and you hear me through that clamour, then you are preoccupied and you will not be able to hear me. You will not be able to hear what is being said, you will hear something else. You will create your own thing through your interpretation. You will miss me. A preoccupied mind is a dull mind. A preoccupied mind is a borrowed mind. Unoccupied, mind is fresh, intelligent, radiant. Hence, one of the bases of all meditations…
What exactly is boredom? If I don't do something, even something needless, a panic arises, a huge fear. What is it that causes this frenzy of movement? Why am I so uncomfortable with this feeling? The frustration of boredom increases when I think that what I would do is equally a meaningless frenzy. I feel caught.
ABHA, BOREDOM IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS IN HUMAN LIFE. Only man is capable of boredom; no other animal is capable of being bored. Boredom exists only when mind starts coming closer and closer to enlightenment. Boredom is just the polar opposite of enlightenment. Animals cannot become enlightened, hence they cannot become bored either. Boredom simply shows that you are becoming aware of the futility of life, its constant repetitive wheel. You have done all those things before -- nothing happens. You have been into all those trips before -- nothing comes out of it. Boredom is the first indication that a great understanding is arising in you about the futility, meaninglessness, of life and its ways. Now, you can respond to boredom in two ways. one is what is ordinarily done: escape from it, avoid it, don't look eye to eye into it, don't encounter it. Keep…
Question: OSHO, I FEEL LIFE IS VERY BORING. WHAT SHOULD I DO? Brij Mohan, AS IT IS, YOU HAVE ALREADY DONE ENOUGH. You have made life boring -- some achievement! Life is such a dance of ecstasy and you have reduced it to boredom. You have done a miracle! What else do you want to do? You can't do anything bigger than this. Life and boring? You must have a tremendous capacity to IGNORE life. Just the other day I was telling you that ignorance means the capacity to ignore. You must be ignoring the birds, the trees, the flowers, the people. Otherwise, life is so tremendously beautiful, so ABSURDLY beautiful, that if you can see it as it is you will never stop laughing. You will go on giggling -- at least inside. Life is not boring, but MIND is boring.
Question: OSHO, WHAT IS BOREDOM? ARE YOU NEVER BORED WITH LIFE? You have been taught by the society to escape, to go on running, not to look back; but boredom follows you like a shadow. Boredom is your shadow. Where are you going to escape? You can't escape from it. Perhaps for a few moments you can drown it in alcohol, but the next morning it will come back, worse than it was before. Then you call it a hangover. You suffer the hangover; still again you are going to drink, knowing perfectly well that the hangover is coming. But at least for a few hours you are absent. Drunkards are not bored. You can go into any pub and see the drunkards. They are utterly happy and enjoying, shouting, screaming and beating, doing all kinds of thingsbut they are radiant.
Beloved Osho, for more than two months you have not been out of this house, and you seem to enjoy so much what I would call a boring life. Osho, what makes it so hard for us -- and sometimes so scary -- to face those feelings of emptiness, hollowness, loneliness? Is the desire for excitement just to hide this emptiness?
Avesh, if one is happy with oneself, centered, there is no need to go anywhere because you cannot find any place better than your own inner being. All the restaurants, the movie houses, the casinos, are visited by very poor people, who have lost contact with themselves. They don't know that they have a space within themselves which is the most beautiful and the most delicious. Certainly anybody looking at me will think that this must be a boring life. I can live in my room for lives. I don't see any point of going anywhere -- because what you are seeking I have found, and I have found it within myself. And you will go on seeking everywhere in the world and you will not find it. To you, certainly it will seem that if you were to live in one room you will feel bored; but as far…