A real education will not teach you to compete; it will teach you to cooperate. It will not teach you to fight and come first. It will teach you to be creative, to be loving, to be blissful, without comparing yourself to others. It will not teach you that you can be happy only when you are the first—that is sheer nonsense. You can’t be happy just by being first, and in trying to be first you go through such misery that by the time you become the first you are habituated to misery.

By the time you become the president or the prime minister of a country you have gone through such misery that now misery is your second nature. You don’t know now any other way to exist; you remain miserable. Tension has become ingrained; anxiety has become your way of life. You don’t know any other way; this is your very lifestyle. So even though you have become the first, you remain cautious, anxious, afraid. It does not change your inner quality at all.

A real education will not teach you to be the first. It will tell you to enjoy whatever you are doing, not for the result, but for the act itself. Just like a painter or a dancer or a musician…

There’s no virtue in competition

You can paint in two ways. You can paint to compete with other painters; you want to be the greatest painter in the world, you want to be a Picasso or a Van Gogh. Then your painting will be second-rate, because your mind is not interested in painting itself; it is interested in being the first, the greatest painter in the world. You are not going deep into the art of painting. You are not enjoying it, you are only using it as a stepping-stone.

You are on an ego trip, and the problem is that to really be a painter, you have to drop the ego completely. To really be a painter, the ego has to be put aside. Only then can existence flow through you. Only then can your hands and your fingers and your brush be used as vehicles. Only then can something of superb beauty be born.

Real beauty is never created by you but only through you. Existence flows; you become only a passage. You allow it to happen, that’s all; you don’t hinder it.

But if you are too interested in the result, the ultimate result—that you have to become famous, that you have to be the best painter in the world, that you have to defeat all other painters hitherto—then your interest is not in painting; painting is secondary. And of course, with a secondary interest in painting you can’t paint something original; it will be ordinary.

Ego cannot bring anything extraordinary into the world; the extraordinary comes only through egolessness. And so is the case with the musician and the dancer. So is the case with everybody.

Let go and be in the flow

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says: Don’t think of the result at all. It is a message of tremendous beauty and significance and truth. Don’t think of the result at all. Just do what you are doing with your totality. Get lost in it, lose the doer in the doing. Don’t “be”– let your creative energies flow unhindered. That’s why he said to Arjuna: “Don’t escape from the war… because I can see this escape is just an ego trip. The way you are talking simply shows that you are calculating, you are thinking that by escaping from the war you will become a great saint. Rather than surrendering to the whole, you are taking yourself too seriously– as if there will be no war if you are not there.”

Krishna says to Arjuna, “Just be in a state of let-go. Say to existence, ‘Use me in whatever way you want to use me. I am available, unconditionally available.’ Then whatsoever happens through you will have a great authenticity about it. It will have intensity, it will have depth. It will have the impact of the eternal on it.”

Jesus says: Remember, those who are first in this world will be the last in the kingdom of God, and those who are the last will be the first. He has given you the fundamental law– he has given you the inexhaustible, eternal law: Stop trying to be the first. But remember one thing, which is very much possible, because the mind is so cunning it can distort every truth. You can start trying to be the last– but then you miss the whole point. Then another competition starts: “I have to be the last”– and if somebody else says, “I am the last,” then the struggle, the conflict, begins again.

I have heard a Sufi parable:

A great emperor, Nadirshah, was praying. It was early morning; the sun had not yet risen, it was still dark. Nadirshah was about to start the conquest of a new country, and of course he was praying to God for his blessings, to be victorious. He was saying to God, “I am nobody. I am just a servant– a servant of your servants. Bless me. I am going on your behalf, this is your victory. But I am a nobody, remember. I am just a servant of your servants.”

A priest was also by his side, helping him in prayer, functioning as a mediator between him and God. And then suddenly they heard another voice in the darkness. A beggar of the town was also praying, and he was saying to God, “I am nobody, a servant of your servants.”

The king said, “Look at this beggar! He is a beggar and saying to God that he is nobody! Stop this nonsense! Who are you to say your are nobody? I am nobody, and nobody else can claim this. I am the servant of God’s servants– who are you to say that you are the servant of his servants?”

Now you see? The competition is still there, the same competition, the same stupidity. Nothing has changed. The same calculation: “I have to be the last. Nobody else can be allowed to be the last.” The mind can go on playing such games on you if you are not very understanding, if you are not very intelligent.

To be competitive is ugly, violent

Never try to be happy at the expense of another man’s happiness. That is ugly, inhuman. That is violence in the true sense. If you think you become a saint by condemning others as sinners, your saintliness is nothing but a new ego trip. If you think you are holy because you are trying to prove others unholy… That’s what your holy people are doing. They go on bragging about their holiness, saintliness. Go to your so-called saints and look into their eyes. They have such condemnation for you! They are saying that you are all bound for hell; they go on condemning everybody. Listen to their sermons; all their sermons are condemnatory.

And of course you listen silently to their condemnations because you know that you have made many mistakes in your life, errors in your life. And they have condemned everything– so it is impossible to feel that you can be good. You love food, you are a sinner. You don’t get up early in the morning, you are a sinner; you don’t go to bed early in the evening, you are a sinner. They have arranged everything in such a way that it is very difficult not to be a sinner.

Yes, they are not sinners. They go early to bed and they get up early in the morning… in fact, they have nothing else to do! They never commit any mistakes because they never do anything. They are just sitting there almost dead. But if you do something, of course, how can you be holy? Hence for centuries the holy man has been renouncing the world and escaping from the world, because to be in the world and be holy seems to be impossible.

My whole approach is that unless you are in the world, your holiness is of no value at all. Be in the world and be holy! We have to define holiness in a totally different way. Don’t live at the expense of others’ pleasures– that is holiness. Don’t destroy others’ happiness, help others to be happy– that is holiness. Create the climate in which everybody can have a little joy.

The post To be competitive is to be stupid, says Osho appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

We see that these character traits represent our more primitive, primordial side—that side of our nature whose main purpose was to ensure our physical survival in earlier times. At the same time, we need to understand that some of these same character traits serve a useful purpose and can be the basis for good today. Here are the 10 characteristics:

The 10 primordial human traits

We are all ambitious. We want to advance—be more, do more, have more and better, whether wealth, fame, or respect.

We are all opportunistic. We tend to take advantage of situations to further our own self-interest.

We are all stubborn. We are obstinate; we refuse to listen or comply, preferring to stick with the status quo.

We are all ignorant. We don’t know all there is to know about any one thing in particular or about most things in general, and never will. Hence, each of us lives our life in a huge void of uncertainty. We don’t know who we are, why we’re here, where we came from, or where we’re going. It’s no wonder, then, that we live according to something we are not.

We are all greedy. We have an excessive, even compulsive, desire to have or acquire; we want more than we need or deserve.

We are all lazy. We have a tendency to put in the least effort to get the most results.

We are all fearful. We have a preoccupation, a concern, a feeling of anxiety, apprehension, or agitation, sometimes even terror, relating to danger, evil, or pain, whether imaginary or real.

We are all selfish. We put our own interests first, well ahead of others, to an extent that is neither fair nor right nor moral.

We are all vain. We have and project an excessively high regard for ourselves: our ideas, our opinions, our abilities, our appearance, our possessions, and so on.

We are all vengeful. We want to return an injury for an injury by inflicting punishment and pain on others for what they have done to us.

If you are offended by this list, as some might be, just ask yourself: “Have I ever exhibited this particular quality at least once in my life? Have I ever been ambitious, opportunistic, stubborn, ignorant, greedy, lazy, tearful, selfish, vain, or vengeful at least once?” I already know your answer. Now we both know that each of these qualities is in you [indeed, in varying degrees in everyone], whether you want to admit it or not.

Beyond selfish motives

So how could some of these characteristics serve us and be the basis for good? How could they add to the collective wellness and benefit humankind? Well, you could he ambitious, opportunistic. and stubborn, and use these same characteristics to help others live healthier, longer, and more productive lives. Think of all the medical researchers who have spent years—sometimes their entire careers—to come up with clues for debilitating diseases such as diabetes, tuberculosis, and leprosy. Or inventors—where would our society be today without modern telecommunications and transportation equipment and systems? Whether modern agricultural practices, new medical devices, or new materials, all were developed to serve a very real need (although in some cases, simple greed may have been a motivating factor as well). And characteristics such as ambition, opportunism. and stubbornness will continue to drive people to use their ingenuity, creativity, and innate intelligence to better the human condition.

When other, totally selfish motives are at play, however, you need to ask the question “Why?” Why have you exhibited many or all of these traits at one time or another in your life, albeit some more frequently and more passionately than others? Specifically, what is your personal pain story—your justification or rationalization for acting this way?

May I introduce to you—the ego! The ego’s power and influence over the way you think has been at work since the beginning of human history. Simply stated, it owns you, or at least it thinks it does. And most of us would have to readily agree because we haven’t seriously considered the possibility of something else as the driving force in our life.

For example, you think, feel, and do each day without really understanding the force or forces that are directing all of this; in many cases, you do whatever you do instinctively and just hope for the best. The ego represents an elaborate belief system that is in your genetic makeup, your DNA, that first and foremost has said to you and is still saying today, “Survive! Look out for number one! Nothing is more important than your personal safety, comfort, and welfare!” And survive both you and I did. But how much longer our species will survive in the way it is currently going about it is perhaps the more pressing question.

The ego’s rationale

To know you must survive implies you must be at risk. If you think you are at risk, you come to believe you must compete. [Sure, it’s a struggle, but what choice do you have?] In order to compete, you must be prepared to fight or flee. If you fight, you might lose; if you flee, you might be caught. Fear, then, is one of the main driving forces behind a lot of what you think, feel, and do.

After telling you to survive, the ego then directs you to move up the ladder to the next level and instructs you to:

• seek safety, security, and freedom from fear;
• seek acceptance, friendship, and love by associating and fraternizing with others;
• seek recognition, status, and self-respect; and finally
• prove to yourself and others that you are unique, capable, and worthy of high achievement.

Having gotten you this far, the ego tells you with great fanfare that you have finally “made” it; you are now on top of the world! And it takes full credit for getting you there! This scenario loosely describes Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human wants and needs as first postulated in his book Motivation and Personality (1954).

Beyond self-actualization

The ego in you is always focused on building up the ego for the ego’s sake (i.e., selfish concern for me) and is totally incapable of considering more altruistic pursuits (i.e., unselfish compassion for others). Its primary goals are twofold: self-aggrandizement and survival. This must be kept top of mind when considering how the ego works. In other words, it is enemy number one (in the sense that it wants to control and direct all your thoughts, feelings, and actions) and must be recognized as such.

Maslow’s ideas are usually depicted as part of a large pyramid with live distinct levels: Physiological needs are at the very bottom, rising to safety needs, social needs, self-esteem needs, and ending with self-actualization needs at the top. Maslow’s theory in this regard is central to helping us understand our basic desires and motives for wanting more in our life. In this regard, the key question we must always ask is: “What is my real motivation for wanting more?” Is it simple self-interest (selfishness) or society’s general welfare (selflessness)? Or can the former also lead to the latter? Hmmm. What do you think as it applies to what you are trying to accomplish in your life?

Later in life, Maslow postulated that his pyramid shouldn’t stop at self-actualization needs at the very top, that in fact there is another key factor he had unwittingly left out. This he called transcendence, meaning the spiritual level that transcends the purely physical world. Maslow’s transcendence level recognizes our natural desire to act morally and ethically with compassion, humility, empathy, kindness, tolerance, benevolence, and generosity. Without taking into account this spiritual or trans-egoic side to our nature, he felt we are simply living as instinct-driven animals or pre-programmed machines.

How the belief in separation arose

An important factor that initially gave credibility and power to the ego, and continues to do so today, is that you were born as a single entity. You discovered that you came in a certain “package” or container, so to speak: a body with finite walls that were made of soft, delicate skin. You arrived in this body very much separate from everything and everyone else. Quite quickly—in fact instantly—you also found yourself all alone. This, at a time when you were the youngest, weakest and most vulnerable, is a very scary realization indeed!

But it gets even worse. Your actual physicality—your physical form—allows you to use only physical sensors to perceive what you see as only a physical world. Now, as you look out and observe all that is going on around you, your separateness is confirmed: Yes, you are separate; yes, you are alone; yes, you are at risk; yes, you must compete; yes, you must fight; and yes, there is good reason to be afraid. (Yes, those train tracks do come together somewhere off in the distance!) We are all wired—7 billion-plus people—to think this way; we are all driven instinctively to want more and more out of life, and eventually get to the so-called “top.” Knowing this, should it be any surprise that there are so many problems in the world?

The ego evolved as a necessary survival mechanism for individual human beings during the long and arduous course of human history. And it did its job very well, at least for those of us who are here today. The irony is that now it has become more of a death wish. As such, we must find ways to overcome or transcend it, not just tame it or try to control it, as it now clearly threatens both our individual and collective selves.

As we humans develop more and more efficient and innovative ways of killing each other [i.e., IEDs, cluster bombs, and unmanned, missile carrying aerial drones], and more and more invasive ways of degrading, indeed raping, the planet [i.e., open-pit mining, clear-cutting forests, and bottom-trawling the ocean floor], there is an urgency today that has never been greater in history. Whether we are able to change our ways. to rise above our destructive nature, only time will tell. Many think it is already too late.

Our true nature

We have previously described the 10 character traits that are a product of the ego, or are at least closely connected to it. In contrast, consider other traits that are beyond the ego, in fact unknown to the ego, examples of what we will call supreme virtue. They are prime examples of our true Nature. It may be that we don’t see them on display in the world as often as we would like but when we do, we usually take special notice of them. [Here, the late Nelson Mandela comes to mind.] These traits or qualities go by such names as honor, respect, compassion, empathy, humility, honesty, truthfulness, virtue, courage, industriousness, justice, righteousness, fairness, generosity, service, responsibility, forgiveness, mercy, and unconditional love.

This list is by no means complete but it’s a good beginning. Let’s see what each of them means.

10 traits of supreme virtue

1. Honor: A keen sense of right and wrong; adherence to actions and principles that are considered right.
2. Respect: To feel or show honor or esteem for others; consider or treat others with deference or courtesy.
3. Compassion: To feel sorrow or deep sympathy for the troubles or suffering of others, with an urge to help.
4. Empathy: The projection of one’s own personality into the personality of another in order to understand him better; intellectual identification of oneself with another.
5. Humility: The state or quality of being humble of mind or spirit; absence of pride or self-assertion.
6. Honesty: Refraining from lying, cheating, or stealing; being truthful, trustworthy, and upright.
7. Truthfulness: Sincerity, genuineness, honesty; the quality of being in accordance with experience, facts, or reality.
8. Virtue: General moral excellence; right action, and thinking; goodness of character.
9. Courage: The ability to face anything recognized as dangerous, difficult, or painful; quality of being fearless or brave.
10. Industriousness: The putting forth of earnest, steady effort; hardworking; diligent.

We now see how you can live authentically, meaning in a genuine and real way as opposed to a false and hypocritical way. You need only manifest the divine essence that is within you. To live authentically is to live in agreement with fact or actuality, in a manner that is consistent with who and what you are. When you are authentic, and only when you are authentic, can you be useful to a higher cause; in other words, play this game called life with much more insight, much more skill, and much more passion. This involves love: love of self, love of others, and love for all things, both animate and inanimate.

The only alternative is to stay trapped into trying to prove to the world that you are a “somebody,” indeed a special somebody. The irony is that you don’t even know who this somebody is that you are pretending to be. It’s like every day is Halloween and you don a different costume that you think best suits the occasion: “Hey, do you like me like this? No? Then how about this? Or this? Or this? Please, like some version or variation of me!”

Hypocrite means:

1. an actor, one who plays a part;
2. a pretender; an imposter;
3. a person who pretends to be what he is not;
4. one who pretends to be better than he really is or pious, virtuous, etc., without really being so.

Are you living a lie?

When you live thinking you are a human being having an occasional spiritual experience, (for example, adopting virtuous behavior only when it suits you and the circumstances), you have to ask yourself, “Am I really what I pretend to be?” In other words, is being spiritual only a part-time job?” At a deep, subconscious level, you know you are not; you are living falsely, dishonestly, and inconsistently. In fact, you are living a lie.

Yes, a lie that you have been led to believe by authority figures, caretakers and well-wishers of all kinds who constantly told you to do this but do not do that; believe this but do not believe that; act like this but do not act like that; go to this church but do not go to that church; enjoy doing this but do not enjoy doing that, etc. And you have never seriously questioned all of their dictates. These people, after all, were much older and wiser than you, and supposedly had your best interests in mind; shouldn’t they know?

All professional actors live a lie when they perform on a stage and take on the persona of someone they are not. And it is an extremely difficult and stressful undertaking, to which most would readily attest. Now consider spending all of your waking moment pretending you are someone you know you are not. This results in a serious case of cognitive dissonance: You are aware there is a disconnect. You say to yourself, “I don’t like this game; I’m not very good at playing this game; I don’t want to continue playing this game.” You show your displeasure by resorting to the usual primitive behaviors that result from disappointment, frustration, and anger: you lash out, you criticize, and you complain. Yes, you demonstrate all the usual mean-mindedness, even invectiveness, that is indicative of the fact that you are not happy.

Happiness isn’t a by-product

Everyday happiness is defined as having, showing, or causing a feeling of great pleasure, contentment, joy, or gratification. And for many, to be happy is the primary purpose of life. But real, authentic happiness is not fleeting, nor is it something that can be had indirectly. Rather it is the result of a deep knowing that comes from being and doing what is in accordance with who and what you are. It’s when you are in a state of continuous validation of your very essence, living as your true Self.

In other words, authentic happiness is not a by-product of something else. You cannot buy it, steal it, eat it, drink it, or touch it as an entity in its own right as many thieves, con artists, fast food addicts, alcoholics, drug addicts, and sex addicts would have you believe. It can be had only directly, with no strings attached. Happiness is an energy and a force, and not a result of anything physical in the world. You can never hope to put your hands around it, caress it and say, “Wow! Look: I finally have this thing called happiness.”

Here is a keen observation by popular American singer and comedian Margaret Young (1891–1969): “Often people attempt to live their lives backwards: they try to have more things or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the exact reverse: You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.”

Consider these words by Lama Surya Das in his book Awakening the Buddha Within (1997) about how to move beyond your first impulse, the ego: “As you walk the inner path of awakening, recognize that it is most definitely a heroic journey. You must be prepared to make sacrifices, and yes, you must be prepared to change. Just as a caterpillar must shed its familiar cocoon in order to become a butterfly and fly, you must be willing to change and shed the hard armor of self-centered egotism. As compelling as the inner journey is, it can be difficult because it brings you face to face with reality. It brings you face-to-face with who you really are.”

The post How ego thwarts your authentic happiness appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

• Use of sharp tones
• Non-acceptance of what is, what people say and what they do. Judging them wrongly
• Putting people in a tight spot, correcting them all the time
• Cutting people. Making people defensive by catching their words
• Replying literally to mere words rather than understanding the context
• Criticising, blaming, negative thinking and fault finding. Use of abusive or hurtful words
• Disturbed inner energy
• Haphazard breathing pattern
• Communicating everything, heightened righteousness
• Trying to love deeply and becoming possessive
• Inability to speak concisely, with few, sweet, slow-paced and gently spoken words.

We are the world

People are all the same at the core. Anything spoken out of unawareness triggers the unawareness in others. Psychologically everybody is the same, only actions seem to differ. We have the same brains but we don’t see it the same way because we have been competing with each other, artificially marking the brains as different. It is so evident that across the world human beings are suffering. We are living in a world of shortage; there is so much anxiety, fear, insecurity, confusion, mental illnesses, fear of getting hurt [emotionally and physically] and fear of death.

Initially, I tried to stay away from what I didn’t like in people and realised that I felt very uncomfortable. I resisted a lot to accept what I didn’t like in others. The transformation came when I started seeing myself in my friends, my parents, my neighbours, and the world as an extension of myself, just like my hands are am extension of me. The engine, i.e. the brain, is the same in all of us with just a difference in our interpretations, which is the root cause of all fights and conflicts around us. Once you start seeing yourself in others, you will not have to change anybody.

Other people have their conditioning, we have ours. They react to our conditioning; we see their reaction and not the reason behind it, which could be us or the way they see us.
We want to feel included in our circles all the time, accepted by people and for this we try to be significant and instead get excluded from our groups. Psychologically, our attempts to gain significance put us on a higher pedestal and others around us on a lower one. This gives a boost to our ego. The ego feels great in defeating people. Whereas when you drop the significance, you reach the other person’s level and are included by default. Significance is trying to be important or standing out from the rest. People are selling their happy stories all the time, they have become salesmen. Our naturalness is almost lost as people are more interested in showing us how happy they are by posting pictures on social media than in actually being happy. This has made us dependent on how many “likes” we receive for a social media post.

When the race to earn money and respect is over, we genuinely pursue what we, in our consciousness, want to do. When you think of making others win, contributing to the larger game, and accept their weaknesses, you surpass the ego and reach the natural state of consciousness.

You feel uncomfortable even amongst your own people because the ego has many expectations and gets hurt easily. With your own people the baggage that you carry is almost constant and much more than it is with strangers. But when you become aware and there is attention in the present, egoistic thoughts cease to make an impact. When you are able to practice this for some time, you will stop deriving pleasure from other people’s losses. Once your expectations drop, you naturally feel happy with people and the relationship then can be enjoyed at a much different level.

Our world reflects what we are

Once a dog ran into a museum where all the walls, the ceiling, the door and even the floor were made of mirrors. Seeing this, the dog froze in surprise in the middle of the hall, a whole pack of dogs surrounding it on all sides from above and below. The dog bared his teeth and all the reflections responded to it in the same way. Frightened, the dog frantically barked. The reflections imitated the bark and resounded many times. The dog barked even harder and the echo kept building. The dog tossed from one side to another, biting the air, his reflections also tossed around snapping their teeth. Next morning, the museum security guards found the miserable dog, lifeless and surrounded by equally lifeless million reflections. There was nobody who would have harmed the dog. Everything that is happening around us is the reflection of our own thoughts, feelings and karma. The negativity that stands between you and the right path is solely yours and not theirs.

Right action

When you have attention, you have energy and the thoughts lose control. So disruptive thoughts don’t operate anymore and right action takes place. Anything you do with an agenda or a planned outcome leads to pain as agendas and outcomes lie in the future and bliss in the present. All outcome-oriented actions are actually reactions to thoughts of tomorrow. The present is the place and when you act from it, it is appropriate and not in duality. Otherwise the mind keeps thinking “was what I did right or not” as the mind struggles with the past and the future. Right action is not possible when you are suffering because of uncertainty, unhappiness, insecurity, greed, envy, competitiveness and violence. Right actions are possible when the suffering stops.

How to be a good observer

When in public, observe your need to prove something, when with friends see the comparisons you make, when with parents see how you try to fix situations so that it doesn’t reflect badly on you, when scared see how the ego justifies your acts, see how you wonder whether or not people are looking at you, always seeking attention, see your thoughts about others, about yourself, about life. See how the ego keeps judging you internally, your actions, decisions and behaviour. People kill animals and then pray, “Thank you for feeding us.” It’s their ego that protects them from going into guilt mode. The ego always wants to be morally upright instead of correcting its own actions. It does not correct them because it is made through attachments. So it cannot correct itself by default. It is attached to what it feels is right for it, irrespective of the results it is getting.

You need a sharp mind to observe things but it is blunt because it is always running and we have not given it any rest. Once you will have the sharpness of the mind, you will be able to observe the movements of your thoughts.

Observe every bit of you. Just watch the way you walk, talk, smile, laugh, cry, behave, the words you use, the decisions you make, the food you eat, alcohol you consume, the cigarettes you smoke, your relationship, your image in your own eyes, the way people see you, your attempts at defining yourself through success and the clothes you wear. Just be present totally to yourself, your intentions, your conditioning, the way you think, the things you like, dislike, your judgments about others, about yourself, the way you perceive things, the way you assume things, and everything that is you and related to you. The moment you become present towards all this, without getting caught in opinions and judgments, a transformation will take place. The intensity with which you observe will determine the speed at which the transformation will happen. What is true for you is what you have observed yourself. And when you lose that, you have lost everything.

Adapted with permission from Freedom from the I by Shashank Kasliwal, published by Jaico Books

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The illusion of superiority

Ego makes you feel superior to others. Can anyone become superior to any other person in every aspect of life? It is impossible. Everyone is unique. God or Nature does not create duplicates of anyone. So ideally the feeling of superiority should not arise. You might say, “I have more wealth or more qualifications than others.” But even that does not mean you are superior to others, because they may have more of something else that you do not have, but wish for. One way to reduce your ego is to accept your own uniqueness and also appreciate the uniqueness of others.

The need to dominate and control

Ego fights with other egos. As soon as you try to dominate or control others, the other person’s ego resists, revolts and reacts. As a result, the other tries to get back at you or sabotage your efforts at the first opportunity. If you give up your need to dominate and control others, your ego is out and the other’s ego has no one left to fight. Peace and happiness prevail.

Blocked rational thinking

Our ego often comes in the way of us accepting the reality of situations and looking at things rationally. When something that we don’t like happens, we resist it. If you keep your ego out of the picture and ask yourself two questions, you will be in a better situation.

• Can I do anything about what has happened? If yes, do it. If nothing can be done, accept the situation as soon as you can.
• Can I learn anything from what has happened? If yes, learn it as soon as you can. Else, let it go without regret.

One night, as I was crossing the street; my hand collided with the handle of a cyclist passing by. It hit my knuckle really hard. I could have got angry at the cyclist for not riding properly and for having bumped into me. Instead, I crossed the road and stood there for a few moments and asked myself, “Why did the cyclist and I not see each other?” I got my answer: It was totally dark. I decided that in the future, I will cross the road at nights only under the streetlights. If I would have allowed my ego to take over the situation, I would have left from there cursing the cyclist and would have also lost out on learning an important lesson that was towards my own safety.

Stunting personal growth

A retired person once shared with me how he was getting bored with all the free time he had on hand. I said to him, “I have a library room at home, you can pick up books of your interest from any subject and learn new things. That will keep you occupied.” His egoistic attitude made him reply, “My grandchildren are in school. It’s their time to learn now. At this age what more is left for me to learn? I already know what I need to.” Old age mostly brings with it wisdom but often it also brings along ego. In order to learn something, you need curiosity and passion, but you also need humility. And ego kills humility and, as a result, puts an end to your growth.

Ego hurts your health

The ego makes you react angrily or think ill of someone or yourself. When that happens, it has a negative effect on your health and wellbeing. Once thinking such thoughts becomes a habit, you suffer from chronic diseases, heart trouble and even cancer. I repeatedly autosuggest to myself that my health is improving everyday in every way. This I do because I am able to maintain my mental balance. Last year, at the age of 84, when my doctor examined all my reports, he said, “You will live for a 100 years!” I replied, “But my plan is to live for 115 years. You have reduced 15 years.” Then both of us laughed. Nobody can say for how long we will live, but living without fear and toxicity can make sure that you enjoy great health as long as you do.

Religion and ego

The Qur’an says: “You should not have ego even equal to a gram of mustard.”

The Bible says, “Only the humble will reach the kingdom of God.”

In Bhaktimarg, you have to surrender your ego totally.

Some saints have said, “Your prayers shall not be accepted, if you have ego.” The reason is that the ego’s function is to increase your feeling of entitlement, to create conflicts, damage your health and make you suffer. Baling Broke has said, “It [pride] is the friend of flatterer, the mother of envy, the nurse of fury, the sin of devils, the devil of mankind.” It is for this reason that all religions have condemned ego. The only way out is to strive to be aware of your egotist feelings when they arise and replace them with humble compassion for self and others.

Peace of mind as mission

If peace of mind is your mission in life [who doesn’t want it!], become aware of small irritations and agitations within your mind. Start to laugh them away. Laughter is the best antidote to irritation. When there is peace of mind, intelligence, oneness, compassion and discrimination enhances your self confidence but not ego. I too learnt this the hard way 20 years ago when, at the age of 65, I underwent a bypass surgery, which let me to change my approach to life.

Byron Katie says, “An unquestioned mind is the world of suffering.” So question your mind and you will realise how repeatedly your ego-based thinking spoils your relationships, makes you miss opportunities due to fear, damages your health and more. What I have learned in my eight decades on this planet is that the purpose of everyone’s uniqueness is not to enforce separation but to make life interesting. Get into the habit of investigating your thinking, feelings and habits. Once you become aware of your self-defeating thoughts, it is easy to get rid of ego.

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I like to think of My Ego as a misery factory—a fairly large one with several misery machines, which run quietly and have great capacity to produce misery and insanity. Its products are the psychological equivalent of intoxicants like alcohol and drugs. Under their influence, I lose all perspective. The products include judgement, righteousness, comparison, entitlement, anxiety, self-pity, envy, fear [psychological, not instinctive], hatred, possessiveness, anger, guilt, resentment, inferiority complex, revenge and many more.

The misery factory works 24/7 and its raw material is the collective unconsciousness of all humanity, which is free and available in ample quantity. Its power supply is imagination. The factory has received funding from a society that promotes the idea of separation, conflict and one-upmanship. No wonder nearly all fellow humans also have their own ego factories.

My Ego is that part of my self that is completely identified with the ideas of separation from others

Annihilation ahead?

The chief consumer of the products of My Ego is the conditioned mind, which has been led to believe that these products are needed for its survival. But I know that this is a lie. Far from being necessary, these products are highly toxic and act like slow poison that will ultimately annihilate its owner and the entire human species.

Sometimes I wonder if complete lockout is the only solution. Perhaps management buyout is a better idea—that way I can take control of the factory and change its core products. What if I found a way to convert the machines into producing bliss instead of misery? What if they start manufacturing life-enhancing substances—tolerance, forgiveness, courage, peace, understanding, respect, freedom, happiness and love?

An important breakthrough

I figure that one way to make the machines stop making misery and start making bliss is to replace the basic raw material—use consciousness in place of unconsciousness. The trouble is that consciousness is in short supply, its only source being a high degree of presence. I have been experimenting with this for a while and though my research is far from over I am happy to report that I have had an important breakthrough. I have found that I can successfully cut off the factory’s power supply using a phenomenon called meditation.

What if I found a way to convert the machines into producing bliss instead of misery?

This is how it works: While meditating, my overactive imagination stops and My Ego comes to a grinding halt. But this phase doesn’t last and as soon as my imagination returns, the factory starts again and the insanity returns. Still, this has been a useful discovery, because it allows me time and space to cultivate the art of presence which, in turn, helps me produce the raw material of consciousness required for bliss in ample quantities.

The more I meditate, the easier it gets to stay present, yielding more and more consciousness, until one day meditation won’t be required—I will be simply present. The misery machines will then finally become transformed into bliss machines and My Ego will be transmuted into My Ecstasy, a factory I wouldn’t mind owning!

This was first published in the April 2015 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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Don’t try to be extraordinary, exceptional, because the more you try the more you will become like an island, closed, caved in upon yourself. Then you are losing your moorings in the existence. Then you are cutting your roots, you are getting uprooted.

That has happened in the West: a feeling of uprootedness. Nobody knows where the roots are. And when you feel uprooted, then you become an egoist, then you exist as a self-sufficient entity—and that is not possible!

Existence is interrelated, we move into each other. When I am talking to you, what am I doing? I am moving continuously in you. When you are listening to me, you are allowing, you are giving a door to me.

You breathe and existence enters you; you open the eyes and the sun enters you—every moment, 24 hours, you are a crossroad. Millions of points meet, millions of lines meet in you. You are not separate!

Just think: can you exist separately? Can you exist totally insulated? You will die within seconds. You are a porous being; existence comes and moves through you. You are just like a room: air comes, the sun comes and goes continuously; that is why the room remains clean and fresh. If you are closed, you will be dead.

The more open you are, the more existence will flow through you. And the more existence flows, the more you will be able to understand what Logos is.

Don’t fight with existence, because you don’t know what you are doing, with whom you are fighting. How can you fight with existence? It is as if a wave is fighting with the ocean, a leaf is fighting the tree—it is foolish! And don’t try to move upstream; that will simply exhaust you. You will be tired and you will feel frustrated because you cannot succeed.

Against existence there is no success. That’s why you and everybody are such failures. Ask your successful people and they are all failures; deep down, they have missed. Your Napoleons, your Hitlers, your Rothschilds, ask them—they are failures, they have failed. What have they attained?

They fought, they tried to move upstream, they wanted to become extraordinary in some way or other—they simply destroyed themselves. To try to become extraordinary is suicidal; it is a gradual suicide, a slow poisoning of the whole system. Surrender to existence, flow with it, wheresoever it goes—willy-nilly, wheresoever it goes.

Why have a private goal of your own? Why not move with the destiny of the whole? Why are you so much worried to achieve something on your own? And how can you achieve it? You cannot achieve….it’s simply not possible.

Only the whole has a destiny, not you. Only the whole is going somewhere, not you. If you can surrender to the whole, everything is achieved—because you become the whole, and the whole’s destiny becomes your destiny, and the goal of the whole is your goal.

And the goal is not somewhere else—the whole is happy right now, the whole is blissful right now. Only you are worried. Only you are worried because you are not flowing with the river. You are trying to cut small corners for yourself.

Look to the commonness of things, and find the common: the more common, the truer; the more exceptional, the more false. Be ordinary—then you are nearer the ground, then you are nearer the truth.

If you can be absolutely ordinary, what else is needed? Because every moment becomes such a benediction. What is the problem when you are absolutely ordinary? You eat and eating is a sacrament.

You sleep and sleep is a sacrament. You walk in the sun, and what more do you need? You breathe—what else is needed to be happy? You love—what more are you asking? Everything is already given; you are just trying to be exceptional. Follow the rule, the common, and don’t try to be the exception, otherwise you will be in misery.

Hell is for all extraordinary people. They may be in politics, in art, literature—wherever they are, hell is for all geniuses, for all extraordinary people, all egoists. Ego is the hell, it gives you suffering—because unnecessarily you start conflicting with everything.

You are never at ease, unease becomes your style of life; with the ego you will always be at unease. Ego is a discomfort; it is a nail in the shoe, it continuously pinches, but you want to be extraordinary.

I was sitting with Mulla Nasruddin and his wife came through and went out of the door. He said, “Look! There goes a great woman.” I said, “What do you mean by ‘great’?”

He said, “She is trying to have a size four shoe on size six feet… there goes an extraordinary woman!” And she is suffering, but she is trying to be exceptional.

Says Chuang Tzu: “When the shoe fits, the body is forgotten, the feet are forgotten.” And when everything is forgotten, how can you cling to the ego? Ego needs that shoes should continue pinching so that you can remember who you are.

That’s why an egoist cannot love, cannot meditate, cannot pray, because if he really prays, then everything fits…then the ego disappears. Ego means a self-consciousness. When something is wrong, only then is self-consciousness there. When everything is right, there is no self-consciousness.

Look to the common, watch for the common—don’t try to be exceptional. But we want to be exceptional. People come to me. If I tell them, “You just sit silently, don’t be too much bothered about meditation and prayer, and by and by it will grow,” they say, “But just sitting?…”

They need something exceptional. If I tell them, “Stand on your head,” then it is okay. That’s why there are so many teachers flourishing all over the world who teach people to stand on their heads—something difficult, uncomfortable, appeals. Ridiculous postures people try in the name of Yoga.

Simply ridiculous! The more ridiculous, the better; the more difficult… if you cannot do them, then ego gets a challenge. So do them! Make postures, absurd, and you think you are doing something great.

Life is simply great…there is no need to improve upon it. If nature wanted you to sit on the head or stand on the head, you would have been created that way. Listen to nature and follow nature and don’t create any conflict with nature; just follow it and soon you will attain a deep silence, which comes when one becomes ordinary.

Excerpted from The Hidden Harmony/Courtesy: Osho International Foundation/www.osho.com

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Life is in living. It is not a thing, it is a process. There is no way to attain to life except by living it, except by being alive, by flowing, streaming with it. If you are seeking the meaning of life in some dogma, in some philosophy, in some theology, that is the sure way to miss life and meaning both.

Life is here now

Life is not somewhere waiting for you, it is happening in you. It is not in the future as a goal to be arrived at, it is here now, this very moment—in your breathing, circulating in your blood, beating in your heart. Whatsoever you are is your life, and if you start seeking meaning somewhere else, you will miss it. Man has done that for centuries.

Concepts have become very important, explanations have become very important—and the real has been completely forgotten. We don’t look to that which is already here, we want rationalisations.Nobody, except you, can come upon it. It is your life and it is only accessible to you. Only in living will the mystery be revealed to you.

Knowledge makes you stupid

The first thing I would like to tell you is: don’t seek it anywhere else. Don’t seek it in me, don’t seek it in scriptures, don’t seek it in clever explanations—they all explain away, they don’t explain. They simply stuff your empty mind, they don’t make you aware of what is. And the more the mind is stuffed with dead knowledge, the more dull and stupid you become. Knowledge makes people stupid; it dulls their sensitivity. It stuffs them, it becomes a weight on them, it strengthens their ego but it does not give light and it does not show them the way. It is not possible.

You are the shrine

Life is already there bubbling within you. It can be contacted only there. The temple is not outside, you are the shrine of it. So the first thing to remember if you want to know what life is, is: never seek it without, never try to find out from somebody else. The meaning cannot be transferred that way. The greatest Masters have never said anything about life—they have always thrown you back upon yourself.

What is death?

The second thing to remember is: once you know what life is, you will know what death is. Death is also part of the same process. Ordinarily, we think death comes at the end; ordinarily we think death is against life; ordinarily we think death is the enemy. But death is not the enemy. And if you think of death as the enemy, it simply shows that you have not been able to know what life is.

Death and life are two polarities of the same energy, of the same phenomenon—the tide and the ebb, the day and the night, the summer and the winter. They are not separate and not opposites, not contraries; they are complementaries. Death is not the end of life; in fact, it is a completion of one life, the crescendo of one life, the climax, the finale. And once you know your life and its process, then you understand what death is.

Breathe in, breathe out

Death is an organic, integral part of life, and it is very friendly to life. Without it, life cannot exist. Life exists because of death; death gives the background. Death is, in fact, a process of renewal. And death happens each moment. The moment you breathe in and the moment you breathe out, both happen.

Breathing in, life happens; breathing out, death happens. That’s why when a child is born the first thing he does is breathe in, then life starts. And when an old man is dying, the last thing he does is breathe out, then life departs. Breathing out is death, breathing in is life—they are like two wheels of a bullock cart. You live by breathing in as much as you live by breathing out. The breathing out is part of breathing in. You cannot breathe in if you stop breathing out. You cannot live if you stop dying.

The man who has understood what his life is, allows death to happen; he welcomes it. He dies each moment and each moment he is resurrected. His cross and his resurrection are continually happening as a process. He dies to the past each moment and he is born again and again into the future.

Understanding life and death

If you look into life, you will be able to know what death is. If you understand what death is, only then are you able to understand what life is. They are organic. Ordinarily, out of fear, we have created a division. We think that life is good and death is bad. We think that life has to be desired and death is to be avoided. We think somehow we have to protect ourselves against death. This absurd idea creates endless miseries in our lives, because a person who protects himself against death becomes incapable of living. He is the person who is afraid of exhaling, then he cannot inhale and he is stuck. Then he simply drags; his life is no longer a flow, his life is no longer a river.

Ego and death are opposites

If you really want to live you have to be ready to die. Who is afraid of death in you? Is life afraid of death? It is not possible. How can life be afraid of its own integral process? Something else is afraid in you. The ego is afraid in you. Life and death are not opposites; ego and death are opposites. Life and death are not opposites; ego and life are opposites. Ego is against both life and death. The ego is afraid to live and the ego is afraid to die. It is afraid to live because each effort, each step towards life, brings death closer.

If you live, you are coming closer to dying. The ego is afraid to die, hence it is afraid to live also. The ego simply drags.

Carrying your own cross

There are many people who are neither alive nor dead. This is worse than anything. A man who is fully alive is full of death also. That is the meaning of Jesus on the cross. Jesus carrying his own cross has not really been understood. And he says to his disciples, ‘You will have to carry your own cross.’

The meaning of Jesus carrying his own cross is very simple, nothing but this: everybody has to carry his death continuously, everybody has to die each moment, everybody has to be on the cross because that is the only way to live fully, totally.

Love, ego and death

Whenever you come to a total moment of aliveness, suddenly you will see death there also. In love it happens. In love, life comes to a climax—hence people are afraid of love.I have been continuously surprised by people who come to me and say they are afraid of love. What is the fear of love? It is because when you really love somebody your ego starts slipping and melting. You cannot love with the ego; the ego becomes a barrier. and when you want to drop the barrier the ego says, ‘This is going to be a death. Beware!’

Ego is dust

The death of the ego is not your death. The death of the ego is really your possibility of life. The ego is just a dead crust around you, it has to be broken and thrown away. It comes into being naturally—just as when a traveller passes, dust collects on his clothes, on his body, and he has to take a bath to get rid of the dust.

As we move in time, dust of experiences, of knowledge, of lived life, of past, collects. That dust becomes our ego. Accumulated, it becomes a crust around you, which has to be broken and thrown away. One has to take a bath continuously—every day, in fact every moment, so that this crust never becomes a prison. The ego is afraid to love because in love, life comes to a peak. But whenever there is a peak of life there is also a peak of death—they go together.

Death completes life

Let it be remembered that death and life both become aflame together, they are never separate. If you are very, very minimally alive, at the minimum, then you can see death and life as being separate. The closer you come to the peak, the closer they start coming. At the very apex, they meet and become one. In love, in meditation, in trust, in prayer, wherever life becomes total, death is there. Without death, life cannot become total.

Coming to the inner light

So don’t ask anybody how you should live your life. Life is so precious. Live it. I am not saying that you will not make mistakes, you will. Remember only one thing—don’t make the same mistake again and again. That’s enough. If you can find a new mistake every day, make it. But don’t repeat mistakes: that is foolish. A man who can find new mistakes to make will be growing continuously—that is the only way to learn, that is the only way to come to your own inner light.

Excerpted from The Art of Dying/ Courtesy: Osho International Foundation/www.osho.com

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I am not talking about surrender of the military kind, but a kind of personal surrender in which you simply let go. Such surrender gives rise to an experience of beautiful serenity within, something that most of us have felt at some time or the other, but can’t seem to sustain it permanently.

Surrender Is Not a Bad Word

If surrender brings so much peace, why is it so difficult? And why is it considered as the attribute of the weak?

It’s because of our ‘ego’. This tiny, three-letter word has a significant impact on the quality of our lives. Our ego wants us to be in control of everything in and around us—our relationships, our health, our careers. The ego wants things its way and when that doesn’t happen, it reacts by evoking all kinds of unhealthy emotions. I wouldn’t be off the mark if I say that our ego is at the root of all our miseries. Fear, anxiety, guilt, frustration, greed, jealousy and all other emotions that don’t feel good, are always the result of the ego’s villainous insistence on being in control.

Because of our ego, we give excessive importance to winning. Our ego-driven society offers all the glory to winners, while losers are severely criticized. What’s worse is that those who fail to win actually believe that they’ve made a big blunder by losing. To the ego, a loss is evidence of lack of total control—and the ego hates it. So, many individuals simply don’t attempt anything because they fear losing. In the process, they live ordinary lives filled with little, if any, happiness in it.

Surrender vs Resignation

The only antidote to problems that our ego creates is surrender. Your rogue ego cannot do much when you let go of your need to be right, to win, or to succeed at any cost.

It may seem paradoxical, but when you live constantly in a mindset of surrender, you start functioning more efficiently because you now live minus the constant nagging of your nasty ego to live only to win—or else suffer. This is why surrender is terrifying to the ego, even though your inner being, your soul, finds it liberating.

It is important that you don’t confuse letting go with giving up. When you give up, you resign yourself to fate. It’s a defeatist attitude that comes from hopelessness and despair. Letting go, on the other hand, is about trusting that a deeper wisdom that is available to you, simply because you are alive.

Related » The point of struggle

It’s About Trusting the Greater Intelligence

Surrender implies that you trust the greater life, of which we are all a part. It means you accept the unalterable truth that our journey is made up of ups and downs, and yet we are always taken care of. When you trust the greater intelligence that makes the sun rise and the trees grow — call it God, a higher power, or whatever else — you will suddenly find no need for controlling the people or circumstances in your life. You will live fully, totally in the moment without worrying about being ahead, being right, winning, or succeeding. Paradoxically, such an outlook improves your chances of success and enhances the quality of your life massively.

Last updated on 13^th September 2024

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— Chinese mystic Chuang Tzu

It is ordinary to try to be extraordinary

Chuang Tzu is a rare flowering, because to become nobody is the most difficult, almost impossible, most extraordinary thing in the world.

The ordinary mind hankers to be extraordinary, that is part of ordinariness; the ordinary mind desires to be somebody in particular, that is part of ordinariness. You may become an Alexander, but you remain ordinary—then who is the extraordinary one? The extraordinariness starts only when you don’t hanker after extraordinariness. Then the journey has started, then a new seed has sprouted.

This is what Chuang Tzu means when he says: A perfect man is like an empty boat. Many things are implied in it. First, an empty boat is not going anywhere because there is nobody to direct it, nobody to manipulate it, nobody to drive it somewhere. An empty boat is just there, it is not going anywhere. Even if it is moving it is not going anywhere.

When the mind is not there, life will remain a movement, but it will not be directed. You will move, you will change, you will be a river-like flow, but not going anywhere, with no goal in view. A perfect man lives without any purpose; a perfect man moves but without any motive. If you ask a perfect man, “What are you doing?” he will say, “I don’t know, but this is what is happening”.

Mind can live in the future, but cannot live in the present. In the present you can simply hope and desire. And that’s how you create misery. If you start living this very moment, here and now, misery disappears.

Ego is the baggage of the past

But how is it related to the ego? Ego is the past accumulated. Whatsoever you have known, experienced, read, whatsoever has happened to you in the past, the whole is accumulated there. That whole past is the ego, it is YOU!

The past can project into the future – the future is nothing but the past extended – but the past cannot face the present. The present is totally different, it has a quality of being here and now. The past is always dead, the present is life, the very source of all aliveness. The past cannot face the present so it moves into the future—but both are dead, both are non-existential. The present is life; the future cannot encounter the present, nor can the past encounter the present. And your ego is your past. Unless you are empty you cannot be here, and unless you are here you cannot be alive.

If people go on colliding with you and if people go on being angry with you, remember, they are not at fault. Your boat is not empty. They are angry because you are there. If the boat is empty they will look foolish, if they are angry they will look foolish.

Those who are very intimate with me sometimes get angry with me and they look very foolish! If the boat is empty you can even enjoy the anger of others, because there is nobody to be angry with, they have not looked at you. So remember, if people go on colliding with you, you are too much of a solid wall. Be a door, become empty, let them pass.

Ignorance breeds anger

Even then sometimes people will be angry—they are even angry with a Buddha. Because there are foolish people who, if their boat collides with an empty boat, they will not look to see whether someone is in it or not. They will start shouting; they will get so messed up within themselves that they will not be able to see whether someone is in it or not.

But even then the empty boat can enjoy it because then the anger never hits you; you are not there, so whom can it hit?

This symbol of the empty boat is really beautiful. People are angry because you are too much there, because you are too heavy there—so solid they cannot pass. And life is intertwined with everybody. If you are too much, then everywhere there will be collision, anger, depression, aggression, violence – the conflict continues.

Whenever you feel that someone is angry or someone has collided with you, you always think that he is responsible. This is how ignorance concludes, interprets. Ignorance always says, “The other is responsible.” Wisdom always says, “If somebody is responsible, then I am responsible, and the only way not to collide is not to be.”

“I am responsible” doesn’t mean, “I am doing something that is why they are angry.” That is not the question. You may not be doing anything, but just your being there is enough for people to get angry. The question is not whether you are doing good or bad. The question is that you are there.

Being is the problem

This is the difference between Tao and other religions. Other religions say: Be good, behave in such a way that no one gets angry with you. Tao says: Don’t be.

It is not a question of whether you behave or misbehave. This is not the question. Even a good man, even a very saintly man, creates anger, because he is there. Sometimes a good man creates more anger than a bad man, because a good man means a very subtle egoist. A bad man feels guilty – his boat may be filled, but he feels guilty. He is not really so spread out on the boat, his guilt helps him to shrink. A good man feels himself to be so good that he fills the boat completely, overfills it.

Tao is totally different. Tao has a different quality, and to me Tao is the deepest religion that has existed on this earth. There is no comparison to it. There have been glimpses, there are glimpses in the sayings of Jesus, in Buddha, in Krishna—but only glimpses.

Chuang Tzu’s message is the purest—it is absolutely pure, nothing has contaminated it. And this is the message: This whole hell is all because there is somebody in the boat.

Excerpted from The Empty Boat. Courtesy: Osho International Foundation

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