Buddha Block

Our Curiosity

Be total – then your whole life becomes a meditation…

Our curiosity to know – THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A WORKAHOLIC AND SOMEONE WHO IS TOTAL IN THEIR WORK?

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.

In Japan, even on Sunday people work – there is no holiday as such – and people are resisting the government, there is great turmoil. They are not ready to take one holiday per week. They will be paid for it, what is the problem? They are addicted. They say, “What will we do at home? No, we don’t want such trouble. At home there will be fighting with the wife, with the children – and we are addicted to work.”

We will open the bonnet of the car, although everything is alright, and we will destroy the car by trying to refine the engine. We will open the television set and destroy it. We have already done it! Sometimes when a national holiday comes, we have done it — destroyed our old grandfather clocks, and they were working perfectly well, but something had to be done!

These are workaholics – addicted to work just as people are addicted to drugs. Work is their drug. It keeps them engaged. It keeps them away from their worries, it keeps them away from their tensions. It keeps them just like any drug: it drowns your worries, tensions, anxieties, sufferings, Christianity, God, sin, hell – everything is drowned. A miserable person suddenly starts laughing, enjoying himself.

You just go to a pub and see. A pub is a far more joyous place than a church. Everybody is laughing, enjoying, fighting, punching each other’s noses, and when they get back home … it is late in the night, they are staggering, falling on the road.

One man came home and he was trembling so much, so drunk he could not manage to open the lock, because the key and the lock … The key was in one hand, the lock was in the other hand, and there was no meeting, no dialogue!

Finally, the policeman on the street saw the poor fellow, so he came. He said, “Can I help you?”

The drunk said, “Yes, just hold the house steady. There seems to be such a great earthquake!”

But you can use anything as a drug – just become addicted.