According to Osho, a workaholic is addicted to activity—using work as a drug to escape oneself—so he is never truly present or silent. Being total in work is the opposite: a meditative immersion, free of compulsion, that brings joy and perfection. Totality in doing also enables totality in non-doing; the workaholic compulsively fidgets, while the total worker can sit silently and enter meditation.
A workaholic keeps busy to avoid themselves, while being total means doing one thing with full presence and calm—like meditation—and also being able to rest quietly.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: Maneesha's question: OUR BELOVED MASTER, COULD YOU TALK ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A WORKAHOLIC AND SOMEONE WHO IS TOTAL IN THEIR WORK? Maneesha, the difference is very great. The workaholic is not total in his work. The workaholic is addicted to work, he cannot sit silently. He has to do something; whether it is needed or not, that is not the question. Now in Japan they are trying more and more for robots to work in the factories, because the robot can work twenty-four hours a day, with no strikes, no trouble with the labor unions, not constantly asking for a raise in the wages, no holidays. Robots are not religious anyway! But the workers are absolutely against it -- and the government is only asking them to take one day off in seven.
Sannyas needs total love and nothing else. But total love includes all. Really nothing is left, all is included in it. And remember, I am not saying perfect love, I am saying total love -- and these two things are very different. For centuries we have been taught how to perfect our love and we have failed because the whole idea was nonsense. Love cannot be perfected. To perfect it is to kill it. And love cannot be killed because love is life, love is eternal, timeless. Love knows no death; love is the only phenomenon in human experience which transcends death. But total love is a totally different phenomenon than perfect love. Perfect love has a certain idea and that idea has to be fulfilled.
Osho, you have said that if any action is total, energy is not lost. Please explain what you mean by total action. And also, in the process of sexual intercourse, what does it mean to be total or complete? Does it mean there is no loss of energy?
And here is the delightful paradox: if one becomes total in action, anger gradually becomes impossible—because total anger burns you up, it scorches you. Hatred becomes difficult—because complete hatred becomes poison; blisters rise in every pore. Enmity becomes difficult—because enmity then appears as self-destruction, as driving a dagger into one’s own chest. We can be angry only so long as we act incompletely. We can be enemies only so long as our acts are not total. The day our acts are complete, that day only the flower of love can bloom in our life. The day our act is complete, prayer becomes the very longing of our being. The day each act of our life becomes whole, that day God alone remains the one truth for us. When oneness arises within, oneness is seen without. As long as there are two within, there are two without. Not even two—there are…
How to he total? How to give everything?
Every evening, people come to ask me: "How to share?" And my problem is that I don't see anything that they are going to share! There is nothing. When you don't have anything, this question arises: "How to share?" This question keeps you happy that you have something to share but you don't know how to share. This keeps you unaware of the fact that you don't have anything to share -- because when you have, it happens spontaneously. You cannot resist it, it has to be given forth. There is no way to avoid, it is inevitable. So first thing, you ask: HOW TO BE TOTAL? Not to be is to be total. Second, you ask: HOW TO GIVE EVERYTHING? Know that you have nothing. And wait... and wait in silence, in patience. Something will start flowing out of your being. It will take you unawares. It will be…
Osho, on the first day you explained that “non-ability” is a precious word in Taoist vision and carries great spiritual value. In that context it seems that tamasic and lazy people already possess the quality of non-ability, yet their spiritual growth is not visible. What is your view on this?
What Lao Tzu calls “non-ability” is the name of the deepest ability. It is not laziness; it is the ultimate state of rest. Nor is it tamas; it is a most incandescent state of energy. Understand the difference clearly. The confusion is natural, because if someone is sitting inactive it appears to us that he is lazy. But all who sit inactive are not lazy. The one we call lazy does not truly sit empty; the work of the mind goes on. Perhaps the lazy man does nothing with his body, but with the mind he is fully busy. Where those who are bodily active are running, he too runs with his desires and cravings. In the mind there is no difference. He seems lazy to us because he is not running as we are. But he too is running. If laziness becomes absolute—what Lao Tzu calls non-doing—then laziness itself…