Osho Quotes on Effortlessness

• You will have to learn ways of relaxing in the present. Enlightenment is not an effort to achieve something. It is a state of effortlessness. It is a state of no-action. It is a state of tremendous passivity, receptivity. You are not doing anything, you are not thinking anything, you are not planning for anything, you are not doing yoga exercises, and you are not doing any technique, any method -- you are simply existing, just existing. And in that very moment... the sudden realization that all is as it should be. That's what enlightenment is!
   

• If you come to a really religious man you will feel a grace around him, effortless. He has not done anything to himself, he has simply relaxed into the ultimate, and you feel the effortlessness around him.
   

• The whole zen attitude is to bring to your notice the fact that there is no effort to be made. The zen attitude is that of effortlessness.
   

• With effort, reach to effortlessness. With seeking, reach to a state of no-seeking. With mind, arrive at no-mind.
   

• First you have to do all that you can do, and then you have to learn non-doing. The doing of the non-doing is the greatest doing, and the effort of effortlessness is the greatest effort.
   

• The first thing to be understood: effort is needed, but effort alone is not enough -- effort and then effortlessness, effort plus effortlessness. Effort precedes, and then effortlessness follows. Effortlessness is the peak of effort, it comes only when you have reached the peak
   

• Effortlessness means not doing anything, inactivity -- AKARMA. Effort means doing much, activity -- KARMA. Both have to be there. Do much, but don't be a doer -- then you achieve both. Move in the world, but don't be a part of it. Live in the world, but don't let the world live in you. Then the contradiction has been absorbed. Then you are not rejecting anything, not denying anything. Then the whole God has been accepted.
   

• If you are going towards the easy, the ego starts dying. And when there is no ego left, you have arrived to your reality -- the right, the truth. And truth and right have to be natural. Easy means natural; you can find them without any effort. Easy is right means natural is right, effortlessness is right, egolessness is right.
   

• Effort brings you to the moment of effortlessness, and effortlessness makes you available to God. So effort is not absolutely unnecessary, remember. It is not a condition to attain truth but it is a condition to attain effortlessness. It is just like when for the whole day you have been working hard, then in the night you move into a very very deep sleep. But if you have rested the whole day then in the night you will toss and turn and there will be no deep sleep possible. The whole day's effort makes it possible for you to relax. Exactly the same is the case with truth. Do whatsoever you can do, and by doing it non doing will flower. By doing it you will be able to relax. And when the relaxation is total, truth simply descends. It is a visit of the beyond.
   

• I teach you both effort and effortlessness, because unless you attain to effortless-effort, unless you attain to active passivity, unless you attain to a singing-silence -- they look paradoxical -- unless you attain to an unmoving dance, you have not attained.
   

• There are things which happen through effort, and there are things which happen only through effortlessness. There are things which will never happen through effort, and there are things which will never happen through effortlessness. All that is mundane happens through effort; all that is worldly happens through effort. And all that is sacred, other-worldly, happens through effortlessness.
   

• The only way to achieve something in the interior world is let-go -- a kind of effortlessness, a relaxation. It is not a doing; it is nondoing. It is not action; it is inaction. And it seems difficult because everybody from the very beginning is told, "Do something; don't just go on sitting there! Something is always better than nothing." In the inner world these are not the laws. Nothing is better than everything.
   

• When Zen masters say "effortlessness" they are referring to the state when your enlightenment is well rooted. Now there is no need of any effort; now you can be relaxed and at ease, it will grow on its own accord. It will bring much foliage, and many flowers, and many blessings.
   

• Sosan is easier than Patanjali. The same will happen in the end. Much effort will bring you to effortlessness, no-effort also will bring you to effortlessness -- because effort can never be the goal, effort can only be the means. You cannot go on making effort forever and forever. You make effort to reach a state of effortlessness. With Patanjali effort is the path, effortlessness is the goal; effort is the means, effortlessness is the end. With Sosan effortlessness is the means, effortlessness is the goal. With Sosan the first step is the last step; with Sosan there is no distinction between means and goals. But with Patanjali there is -- you have to make many steps.
   

• Effortlessness is a great phenomenon. Once you know it, many millions of things become possible to you. Through effort the market; through effortlessness the God. Through effort you can never reach to nirvana -- you can reach lo New Delhi, but not to nirvana.
   

• Whenever it happens it is never late; whenever it happens it is always early. The happening is so great that you cannot claim it for yourself. You cannot say: 'I have earned it.' The happening is so great that it is always through grace and not through effort. It happens through effortlessness. Whenever it happens, you know well that it is through compassion, grace, that it has happened. It has nothing to do with you or your earning.