According to Osho, doing nothing is hard because it offers no challenge to the ego, which survives on effort and difficulty. Idleness starves the ego, and sustained non-doing leads to its dissolution. Meditation is precisely this art of 'just being' (initially tough but increasingly effortless once you taste its simplicity and deep relaxation), revealing action itself as the real problem.
Doing nothing is tough because your ego wants to stay busy to feel important, but with practice it relaxes and lets you just be.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHY IS DOING NOTHING SO DIFFICULT? Doing nothing is difficult because it has no challenge for your ego. Your ego lives on challenge. The more difficult a thing, the more your ego is nourished in doing it. Not doing anything, ego starves. And if you continue not doing anything the ego dies. Meditation is nothing but a preparation for the death of the ego. That's why meditation means doing nothing -- just being. Difficult, hard, but not impossible. And once you have tasted the simplicity of doing nothing, and the relaxation of it, it becomes easier and easier. To me, doing something is the problem. Many people have asked me why I go on keeping my left leg over my right leg the whole time. Just doing anything is difficult, even to move the legs! I leave them to meditate.
Osho, you have titled this series of talks “Sahaj Yoga.” Do “sahaj” and “yoga” not seem mutually opposed?
Anand Maitreya! They don’t just seem opposed, they are opposed. But no ultimate truth of life can manifest without contradiction. Life is made of opposites—darkness and light, day and night, woman and man, negative electricity and positive electricity, birth and death. The very structure of life is woven of opposites. Hence the opposites are not only opposed; they are complementary to each other. If you have labored hard all day, you will be able to sleep deeply. Labor and rest are opposites, yet only the one who has worked can rest deeply—and the one who has not worked cannot. So the opposites are not only opposed, they complete each other. And only the one who has rested deeply at night can rise in the morning and engage in work again. One who has not rested through the night will not be able to work in the morning. Look closely at…
Question: OSHO, EXACTLY HOW DO YOU NOT DO IT? I said, "This feeling is not from the awareness that you are, because your consciousness has remained the same. This sense of a new birth is coming from your ego; your ego is tremendously gratified, strengthened. That is your 'gain.' But according to those who know that is your loss." What is gain to the ego is loss to the soul. What is a blessing to the ego is a curse to the soul. What seems to be of tremendous importance to the ego is just sheer stupidity to the innermost core of your being. The logic of the ego is that it is never interested in the simple things, because if you say, "I can breathe!" that is not going to bring crowds to welcome you, to say, "Teertha, you are great! Your name will remain immortal because you breathe.
He said: I am doing nothing. You have recognized rightly—I am trying somehow to do something, because without doing, the mind gets very frightened. And how long can one sleep? If you think about yourself, you will find the same condition—something or other. If everything were arranged for you for three months and you were told: sit empty for three months, you would say: I’ll jump from the roof, hang myself. Three months, you say? Three hours are very difficult! Those imprisoned do not suffer from the jail itself. The real suffering is from becoming without work. That is why in prison people write commentaries on the Gita, compose The Secret of the Gita—God knows what all they do. Something is needed to do. People in prison read books, write books. Some work—emptiness is very hard. And one who cannot be empty cannot enter meditation.
Is "sitting silently doing nothing" the same as "looking into one's own being"?
NO, IT IS NOT THE SAME. Looking, into one's own being is still doing something. Doing nothing is precisely that -- doing nothing, neither looking out nor looking in. Looking is a kind of doing -- even if you are trying to observe, you are TRYING; effort is involved. And through effort comes tension, expectation, frustration -- all that. Just a small effort can bring the whole world in. If you succeed you will feel great; if YOU succeed, the ego will succeed. What the effort is, is irrelevant: success brings ego. Yes, even if you succeed in meditation it brings ego. If you fail it brings frustration. Frustration is nothing but the ego feeling bad -- it could not make it; the ego is hurt, wounded. With effort, the whole world enters in. Doing nothing simply means that: no effort, not going anywhere, not desiring anything -- not even…