Osho,
It seems, in this world, everyone is fighting, or at least competing, with everyone else?

“To understand this we have first and foremost to understand that what has been fed to the human mind, in the largest quantity, is the poison of ambition. The whole structure of our society is based on ambition.

“We make it a point to make the littlest child ambitious. He is goaded on and on to stand first in whatever he does – whether at school or at play, while learning behavior or wearing clothes; whatever he does, or whatever we make him do, we see that he is well caught in the spirit of competition.

Ambition means: We make his ego stand in competition with the ego of others.

“We tell him that others should not overtake him. His lagging behind will leave no place for his ego. So, wherever he is, he should always try to be at the top. This, being the first, is our poison. Whether in clothes or in business or in education or whether in worship and prayer or in renunciation or in penance we are taught constantly to remember that ‘I am being judged vis-à-vis others.’ I have forever to see where I stand with regard to others. What is my place in the line? Am I lagging behind? If so, I will be in pain.”

Osho, The Way of Tao, Vol. 1, Talk #9

Are we born with this ego? And why is society so involved with it?

“A child is born, not with an ego, really without the ego. Then we begin to cultivate the ego; society needs it, survival needs it. So we begin to create the ego. We begin to create it through education, through competition, through comparison. Because we cannot conceive how the child will fight for existence, for survival, without the ego. How will he even be able to move? So a strong ego must be created. Our whole culture, education – all training – is just to create a strong ego in the child so that he can fight, so that he can move, so that he can compete, so that he can survive. This ego is a survival measure, but once created and crystallized it will not allow the real master to come in its place.”

Osho, That Art Thou, Talk #13

Is developing this strong ego not a good idea then?

“The ego creates politics, the ego creates ambition. The ego creates jealousy, the ego creates a constant struggle, violence, because the ego cannot be satisfied unless it reaches to the top. And everyone is trying to reach to the top. A cut-throat competition arises in every arena of life. In economics, politics, education, everywhere, there is cut-throat competition.

No one is interested in himself; everyone is interested in the ambition to reach to the top and no one thinks where he is going when he reaches to the top.

“What will you achieve just by reaching the top? Nothing is achieved. You simply waste your life.”

To continue reading this OSHO Talk, visit: Beginningless Beginning, Endless End

So this is not a loving way to bring up children?

“Every child is born to grow and to become a fully-fledged human being: with love, with compassion, with silence. He has to become a celebration unto himself. It is not a question of competition, it is not even a question of comparison. But the first ugly conditioning distracts you because the urge to grow, the urge to become more, the urge to expand, is being used by the society, by those with vested interests. They divert it.

They fill your mind so you think that this urge is to have more money, this urge means to be at the top in every way: in education, in politics.

“Wherever you are, you have to be at the top; less than that and you will feel you are not doing well, you will feel a deep inferiority complex.”

To continue reading this OSHO Talk, visit: Cut the Social Crap Completely

Why does society use this ugly conditioning?

“The society has not yet known any other way to make you do something, the only way it knows is to create a competitive fever: create a neurosis, create a longing, an ill longing, to be the first. The society has not yet discovered any better way to make you creative. ‘Compete, compare, defeat – reach first place.’ It teaches you conflict, violence.

“And to be in that conflict, naturally it teaches you discontentment with yourself – otherwise how will you improve? It gives you great ideals: ‘You have to be like this.’ And then suddenly you look so short, so small, so tiny, so trivial.

The ideal is so big, so great, and you are so small.

“You shrink: a great rejection arises in you, you start hating yourself. This is the whole misery that people are passing through.”

To continue reading this OSHO Talk, visit: An Eternal Pilgrimage

“You have been brought up with the idea of fighting. Fight with nature, fight with people, compete, because that is the only way to survive. And only the fittest survive – so become a more and more competent fighter. The society wants to create the ego in you. Once the ego is created in you, you are a miserable person, false, phony, and you can be exploited.

“Then the society can exploit you, your parents can exploit you, the priests can exploit you. Then everybody is capable of exploiting you.”

To continue reading this OSHO Talk, visit: A Buddhafield in Spring

So it looks like our whole education system is creating all this ugliness.

“Education should not be competitive; people should not be judged against each other. Competitiveness is very violent and very destructive. Somebody is not good at mathematics and you call him mediocre. He may be good at carpentry, but nobody looks at that. Somebody is not good at literature and you call him stupid – and he will be good at music, at dance.

“A real education will help people to find their life, where they can be fully alive.If a man is born to be a carpenter then that is the right thing for him to do, there is nobody to force anything else.

This world can become such a great, intelligent world if a man is allowed to be himself, helped to be himself, supported in every way to be himself, and nobody comes in and interferes – in fact, nobody manipulates the child….

“Right now everything is topsy-turvy. One who wanted to become a carpenter has become a doctor, one who wanted to become a doctor has become a carpenter: everybody is in somebody else’s place. Hence so much unintelligence – everybody is doing somebody else’s job. Once you start seeing it, you will feel why people are behaving unintelligently.”

To continue reading this OSHO Talk, visit: Love Makes No Shadow

If there is no ambition and no competition and no comparison, then how am I going to grow?

“Growth has nothing to do with these things. Growth has something to do with energy; growth is an energy phenomenon. When you don’t compare, when you don’t compete, when you are not ambitious, when you don’t want to be anybody other than who you are, you accumulate so much energy – because all that energy that was being wasted in competition and conflict, is no longer wasted. You become a reservoir.

“Out of that energy comes creativity. Creativity has nothing to do with competition, it has something to do with overflowing energy. William Blake is right, he says, ‘Energy is delight.’

When you are overflowing with energy, aglow with energy, aflame with energy, it itself becomes creativity.

“You start growing, but now the growth has a totally different connotation. It has no goal – it has a source but no goal. Now you are not thinking what to be; you are not following a particular goal, a particular plan. You are such a big river that out of your rushing energy you will reach the ocean….

“You have to sing a song because the heart is so full and overflowing. You have to pour it into songs. You cannot contain the energy, hence the overflow happens. And that overflow is creativity.”

To continue reading this OSHO Talk, visit: An Eternal Spring

Is is it possible to live without all this comparison and competition?

“You have to understand that competition is meaningless. You have to meditate deeply and recognize that you are not like anybody else. And competition can be only among similar people – and everybody is dissimilar, unique.

“Once the competitive mind disappears, many things change in you; then you are not jealous.

If somebody has a beautiful face and somebody has more money, and somebody has a more powerful body, you simply accept the fact that a few trees are tall and a few trees are small. But existence accepts them all.

“The disappearance of competitiveness will also help you to get rid of greed. People go on accumulating – they want to be in a better position than you, with more money than you, with everything better than you. And their whole life is wasted in that.”

To continue reading this OSHO Talk, visit: New Bottles for Old Wine

You often speak of “Let-go.” Can we let go of this madness? Let-go seems to be natural.

“Let-go means no competition, no struggle, no fight… just relaxing with existence, wherever it leads. Not trying to control your future, not trying to control consequences, but allowing them to happen… not even thinking about them. Let-go is in the present; consequences are tomorrow. And let-go is such a delightful experience, a total relaxation, a deep synchronicity with existence….

To me, let-go means you are not fighting for anything in life, but giving everything to life to take care of.

“You say ‘let-go seems to be natural.’ It only `seems’… because your whole conditioning is against it… You have been brought up for millions of years to fight. Fighting, either you can be defeated – which will create a wound, which will create revenge – or you can be victorious; which will again create another kind of wound. That is the ego. In either case you are a loser. Defeated you lose, victorious you lose. In either case you are going farther away from yourself….

“Let-go is totally a different approach. Its first step is dropping the ego, remembering that you are not separate from existence: with whom are you fighting? You are not separate from people: with whom are you fighting? With yourself… and that’s the root cause of misery. With whomsoever you are fighting, you are fighting with yourself – because there is nobody else.

Let-go is a deep understanding of the phenomenon that we are part of one existence.

“We cannot afford to have separate egos; we are one with all. And the all is vast, immense. Your understanding will help you to go with the whole, wherever it is going. You don’t have a goal separate from the whole, and the whole has no goal. It is not going anywhere. It is being simply here.…

“And then a silent relaxation, flowing with the river, unconcerned where it is going, unworried that you can get lost… no anxiety, no anguish, because you are not separate from the totality, so whatever is going to happen is going to be good.”

To continue reading this OSHO Talk, visit: Let It Sink within Your Heart

END

Read more about competition – or any other subject you are interested in – in the OSHO Online Library. It contains all of Osho’s books in English and Hindi, which can be read and searched.

This article is published in Osho.com under the headline: Competition: Winning the Race to the Graveyard