An essay by Kul Bhushan
When you are at work, you pine for rest. When you have non-stop rest without a job, you pine for work. This is how your mind works all the time, without any rest (pun intended).
So, you could adopt a new slogan, ‘Work is Rest’ and also its opposite, ‘Rest is Work’. That’s what I did, when in 1966 I started off with my twin careers as an educationist and journalist – with much work and no rest. So, the solution was to interchange work and rest. The nameplate on my desk had the official titles facing the visitors, while my personal slogan faced me, so that it could inspire me at all times.
The idea originated from a bestselling novel, 1984, by George Orwell, which made a profound impact on me when I read it for my journalism course. This famous novel was introduced and taught by Sir Tom Hopkinson, a renowned editor, who had even written a book on Orwell. From this novel and Hopkinson’s observations, many new mind-blowing slogans emerged, like: ‘War is Peace’ and ‘Peace is War’. How come?
Simple: When war is going on, all efforts are for peace; and when there is peace, preparations for war or preventing war are in full swing. Similarly, ‘Love is Hate’ and ‘Hate is Love’. Just think about this: When you love someone very much, an element of hate creeps in as well, and when you hate a person very much, you end up loving some aspects of their personality.
How did the slogan ‘Work is Rest’ re-emerge in my life after all this time? After over half a century? A few weeks ago, a young lady friend rang me to ask for help as she was desperately looking for a job. She thought that as a trained journalist I could get her one, because she assumed I knew a few editors. I told her I had no contacts with editors, and advised her to switch over to Public Relations where there would be plenty of opportunities. Within a few days she rang back excitedly and informed me that she had indeed secured a job as a PR professional. Great!
“Feeling so full,” she messaged a couple of weeks later. “Need a break. Getting no time, not even for a walk. God help me! I miss the trees, the freedom.” My brief response was, “Work is Rest.” And she got it!
Work is Play
Recalling my admiration for Orwell, I dug up the old sign from my attic and reminisced over the time when it had sat on my desk as a constant reminder. After a decade, that would have been in the mid-seventies, I became overwhelmed by Osho’s vision. He had a totally opposite view about work. I heard him say, “Work is Play.”
How come? Plenty of examples of ‘Work is Play’ come to mind. First, the professional sportsmen and sportswomen who are making millions, indeed billions, while playing football, golf, tennis, cricket, boxing, car racing and all sorts of other sports. Some examples of billionaires from different sports are: Tiger Woods (golf), Christiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi (football), Magic Johnson (basketball), Michael Schumacher (Formula One Car Racing), Roger Federer (tennis), Floyd Mayweather (boxing) – and the list goes on.
Billionaire Entertainers
Then there are the entertainers who amass millions as singers, musicians, dancers, actors, comedians. Pop singers have even become billionaires, the latest one being Taylor Swift, while others on the list would be: Rihanna, Paul McCartney, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Jay-Z, Diddy, and others.
When your profession becomes your passion, your work becomes play. It is a leela, the Hindu concept of this world as a playful happening, where winning or losing is not in your hands. In real life, if you have a goal which consumes your total energy and effort, you work without rest. You keep looking for new openings, new strategies, new solutions to attain your goal. This is an outward effort, and when you achieve your goal you become ecstatic, but if you fail, you get depressed. Leela, though, implies that you are ready to accept success and failure with the same gratitude. Thus, work has become a play. And a sports match you will play with your total energy – but the outcome is not in your hands…
Osho points over the physical horizon when he says, “Work as play, work as enjoyment, work as worship – then it is beautiful; it has a grace to it. Work as an economic activity is ugly. Then you become a part of the marketplace. Then you are thinking only in terms of what you are going to get out of it. Then you are never here-now. Then you are always in the result, and the result is in the future. Never be result-oriented – that is the misery of the human mind – be present-oriented. And you are not going to get your innermost being through work. You are going to get it by being present, by being aware.” 1
Work is Worship
If done without monetary gain, work becomes meditation and transforms into worship. When people join an ashram or a monastery, they are given work to do that helps maintain the establishment. This is in addition to the time they spend in prayer or meditation. As they work on mundane tasks such as farming, cooking or cleaning, they gradually fall into no-mind and connect with their inner selves. Now their work has become worship.
If you work to help the needy or the deprived, contributing your effort, energy and time, this work too becomes prayer. If your heart goes out to a hungry orphan and you provide him with food or you are touched with the loneliness and pain of a senior citizen to whom you can give company and you see their smile come back, this also is prayer for you. When you volunteer for any such task or project without any monetary benefit, you are not merely helping the deprived, you are also helping yourself as your task becomes your prayer.
By the way, work was termed as ‘worship’ in Rajneeshpuram, Osho’s city in Oregon, USA. Osho’s disciples used to say, “I am worshipping in the garage.” Or, “I am busy worshipping in the kitchen.” And it was (meant to be) worship for them.
So, from ‘Work is Rest’, I have moved to ‘Work is Play’ and on to ‘Work is Worship’.
1 Osho, Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 10, Ch 4, Q 5 (excerpt)
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