I have no hobby - Osho :->

BELOVED MASTER, WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY?

Anando, I have none. I don't need any. A hobby is needed to keep you occupied. When you are tired of your ordinary occupation -- and naturally one gets tired of earning bread and butter -- when you are tired of your ordinary occupation there are only two alternatives. Either be unoccupied...which creates great fear in you, because to be unoccupied means to be with oneself, to be utterly alone with oneself. It is to face one's own abysmal depth -- it frightens, it scares. It means to face one's life and one's death, it means to face one's own interiority -- which is infinite, so vast you cannot comprehend it. And the very vastness frightens. A great trembling arises in you.

The one alternative is: meditate when you are unoccupied with your ordinary business. The other alternative is: get occupied again in some foolish activity, and call it a hobby.

A few people collect postage stamps -- now, see the stupidity of it -- and they call it a hobby. And all hobbies are like that. These are ways and means to keep escaping from yourself.

I am utterly blissful with myself. To be alone, to be, without doing anything, is such a profound experience that if once you have tasted it you will drop all these stupid activities called hobbies. Hobbies are pseudo occupations. When real occupations are not there, you get into pseudo occupations. Now, see the foolishness of it. Six days of the week you are waiting for Sunday -- so that you can relax, so that you can rest, so that you can be with yourself. You are tired of the world; the world is too much with you. You are tired of people, you are tired of everything. And you are hoping Sunday will come soon, and when Sunday comes you are again occupied -- now it is your hobby. You cannot remain unoccupied; that is your problem.
And it often happens that a person is more tired after Sunday than after any other day, because of so many hobbies, and going for a picnic, and driving, and doing a thousand and one things for which you have been waiting for six days. And you were thinking you were going to rest?

You cannot rest! You don't know how to rest. You cannot relax -- you don't know how to relax. Even in the name of relaxation you will get into some work, some kind of work; even in the name of rest you will start some kind of work. Simply because you are not paid for it, does it become rest? You will play cards or chess. You are not paid for it, that's true, but that doesn't make much difference; it is only unpaid work.

Rather than searching for hobbies, use the opportunities. Whenever you are capable of having a time empty, utterly unoccupied, with yourself, remain...remain in it, don't move out of it. Don't start collecting stamps.

Two old Jewish men were sitting on a park bench. "Well, what do you do now that you are retired?" asked one.
"I have a hobby: I raise pigeons," replied the other.
"Pigeons? Where do you keep them? You live in a condominium!"
"I keep them in a closet."
"In your closet? Don't they shit on your shoes and on your clothes?"
"No," said the man. "I keep them in a box."
"In a box? How do they breathe?"
"Breathe? They don't breathe," said the man, "they are dead."
"Dead?" exclaimed the friend, shocked. "You keep dead pigeons?"
"What the hell, it is only a hobby!"


OSHO