If your body and thoughts stop rushing and you rest quietly, your energy fills up like a battery, and that calm is real strength.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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…
Osho, in Lao Tzu’s vision of life, what place is there for sadhana (spiritual practice)? And one who relies only on drifting, not on swimming—how can he reach his goal? Is effort not necessary to reach the goal? Lao Tzu’s “doing nothing,” being inactive, also seems like a kind of goal. To abandon oneself to unknowing, unknown currents—is that wisdom, a mark of the wise, or is it ignorance and the mark of the ignorant?
No: for those who do not understand and can only understand doing, something must be made for them to do. And they must be made to do so much that by doing and doing they become exhausted and drop it. But the event happens only when they drop. Remember this: the event will not happen before that point of letting go which Lao Tzu speaks of. They must be tired out by doing. They must be made to do so much that they come to such a pitch of tension that there remains no way to maintain it, and the tension falls away. Tension has its laws. Either you drop tension right now—through understanding. One way is to drop tension through understanding. My fist is clenched. One way is that you tell me: “Clenched is not the fist’s nature; therefore you will get tired. Clenched is not the fist’s nature;…
Do they simply have to be endured? They do have to be endured. So his freedom is not license. There is a deep check upon it. He is free in that he can act contrary to nature. But whatever consequences arise from acting contrary—painful ones—he will have to endure them.
This kind of man is not what we ordinarily call a “seeker.” The seeker we speak of is usually a reaction to the householder. If the householder runs a shop, the seeker does not; if the householder earns wealth, the seeker renounces it; if the householder marries, the seeker does not. But his rules are derived from the householder—he is only a reaction. Lao Tzu says, “I am no one’s reaction. It does not matter what others do. I neither follow anyone to do as he does, nor go against anyone to do the opposite. I let happen what arises from within.” Allowing nature to happen means not imitating anyone, not copying anyone, not building one’s personality in opposition to anyone. Whatever can happen from within, whatever wants to happen—we allow it. No obstruction, no condemnation, no opposition, no struggle, no conflict. Let what happens, happen. This means dropping notions…
When the deep meaning of things is not understood the mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail.
THE WAY IS PERFECT LIKE VAST SPACE WHERE NOTHING IS LACKING AND NOTHING IS IN EXCESS. INDEED, IT IS DUE TO OUR CHOOSING TO ACCEPT OR REJECT THAT WE DO NOT SEE THE TRUE NATURE OF THINGS. LIVE NEITHER IN THE ENTANGLEMENTS OF OUTER THINGS, NOR IN INNER FEELINGS OF EMPTINESS. BE SERENE WITHOUT STRIVING ACTIVITY IN THE ONENESS OF THINGS AND SUCH ERRONEOUS VIEWS WILL DISAPPEAR BY THEMSELVES. WHEN YOU TRY TO STOP ACTIVITY TO ACHIEVE PASSIVITY YOUR VERY EFFORT FILLS YOU WITH ACTIVITY. AS LONG AS YOU REMAIN IN ONE EXTREME OR THE OTHER YOU WILL NEVER KNOW ONENESS. THOSE WHO DO NOT LIVE IN THE SINGLE WAY FAIL IN BOTH ACTIVITY AND PASSIVITY, ASSERTION AND DENIAL. Logic will say something absolutely different. Logic will say, "Practice rest the whole day, so in the night you can rest beautifully." Mulla Nasruddin went to his doctor. Coughing, he entered.…
Question: ON THE SOFTEST SUBSTANCE: THE SOFTEST SUBSTANCE OF THE WORLD GOES THROUGH THE HARDEST. THAT-WHICH-IS-WITHOUT-FORM PENETRATES THAT-WHICH-HAS-NO-CREVICE; THROUGH THIS I KNOW THE BENEFIT OF TAKING NO ACTION. THE TEACHING WITHOUT WORDS AND THE BENEFIT OF TAKING NO ACTION ARE WITHOUT COMPARE IN THE UNIVERSE. But at that very moment, miles away from the grove, on the road a beggar was passing, going from one town to another. Suddenly, from out of the blue, a deep urge came into him to go into the forest. He resisted the urge, it was dangerous, the forest was filled with wild animals and there was no point in going into it because he had to reach the other village by the morning, and half the journey was yet incomplete. For what should he go into the forest?