Don’t try to escape in any way from anything – work or family

When you really do your work it will help you meditate more deeply, because ordinarily the mind goes on overlapping. When you are meditating it will feel guilty about work, and when you are working it will think to go and meditate, and so it goes on. This overlapping has to be stopped. When you meditate, meditate. When you work, work.

Don’t try to escape in any way from anything – work or family. One is to escape from nowhere – because the escapist mind can become peaceful, but it cannot become blissful; that’s the trouble. An escapist mind can become peaceful, because if you don’t work, if you avoid every situation where trouble can arise, where there is challenge, conflict, competition, then of course, naturally you become peaceful. But that peace is bogus and not worth having. The slightest disturbance, and it will be disturbed. 

I would like a peace that is attained amidst flames, a peace which is attained in the marketplace; a peace that is attained where there is no possibility of attaining it. Then you attain to an integration; a crystallisation comes to you. Of course the way is long and hard, but the short-cut is just an escape.

So l would like you to remain wherever you are. Go on working as you are working. Fix a time for meditation, and then the remaining time is for work; work and meditate. Enjoy it, be more meditative, and soon – it will take at least three months – soon you will become settled, and then you will see that a harmony has risen between work and meditation.

Osho