Osho on Anger and Let-go

The first sutra:

LET GO OF ANGER, LET GO OF PRIDE.

WHEN YOU ARE BOUND BY NOTHING,

YOU GO BEYOND SORROW.

The most important thing to be understood is that Buddha is not saying, “Repress anger, repress pride.” And he is not saying, “Drop anger, drop pride,” either. He is using the words LET GO OF ANGER, LET GO OF PRIDE. The key is in the words ‘let go’.

There are people who are full of anger, possessed by anger, possessed by pride. They are insane. Insanity is the climax of pride and anger. And there are people who are afraid of anger and pride; hence they repress them. But a repressed insanity is far more dangerous, because it accumulates. Then you are sitting on a volcano. It can erupt any moment. It will destroy you. It will destroy others who are related to you. It is poison.

If one has to choose between the two, expressing or repressing, then expressing is far better, because at least the poison never accumulates. It is thrown in mild doses, homeopathic doses. But if you accumulate, it is no longer homeopathy, it becomes allopathy. Then the doses are big and, sooner or later, your repressed anger will be so powerful that you will not be able to keep it repressed anymore. Then it simply explodes and you are absolutely helpless.

Humanity has been taught by the priest, the politician, the pedagogue down the ages to repress anger. The society is not concerned with you, it is concerned only with your outer appearance. What happens to your inner world is nobody’s business; whether you suffer, live in hell inside, that is left to you. Just keep a beautiful appearance, learn etiquette, behave in a cultured way and if you are carrying a hell that is your problem. But the person who is carrying a hell within, howsoever cultivated he becomes, sophisticated, cultured, he remains a wild animal within. Scratch him a little bit and his humanity will disappear, his character will disappear and you will find just the opposite kind of man inside. That’s what happens when somebody drinks too much. A very cultured man, once he is intoxicated, starts being very uncultured. That is his truer self. Alcohol has not created it; it has only removed the barriers, it has only removed the rocks that were repressing it.

In the East there has been a secret tradition of tantrikas who go on practicing meditation — and side by side they go on taking drugs in greater and greater amounts for a certain reason. They are not interested in drugs, they are interested in meditation. But they go on increasing the amount of the drug slowly slowly, so that they can remain alert with the drug. It takes a long time, it is a very subtle process of awakening. In the hands of the fools it will be destructive, it will be suicidal. Hence it is a sacred tradition. Only the master gives it to the disciple — and very rarely. If he finds some disciple of such integrity, then only does he give this process: “Meditate and go on increasing the amount of the drug so slowly that it never overpowers you and your watchfulness remains intact.” But the drug will start removing all rocks and it will bring up all that you have repressed down the ages in your many lives. Watching it you will be allowing it to disappear. That is the magic of watching. If you watch something, either it is going to disappear totally from your being, or it is going to be dissolved into your being. If it is something natural, spontaneous, it will be dissolved into your being. That too is beautiful. If it is something not part of your being, extraneous — has come from the outside, is a parasite on you — it will evaporate.

The real definition of good and bad can only be this: the good is that which grows with meditation, watchfulness, and the bad is that which disappears as you grow in watchfulness, as you grow in awareness. Awareness has to be the decisive factor. When you become aware of your anger there happens a let-go, because anger is not part of your natural being, neither is pride. They start evaporating. As the sun of awareness rises in you, they start evaporating like dewdrops in the early morning sun.

And the second thing to remember: Buddha makes these two statements together, LET GO OF ANGER, LET GO OF PRIDE. Why? There is a reason: pride is ego, “I am superior, I am holier, I am greater, I am something special, I am.”

Ego is the root cause of anger. If you think you are superior, higher, holier, special, you will be constantly angry, because the world is not going to accept it.

In fact everybody else also thinks in the same foolish way. And when there are so many great people, conflict is bound to arise. And everybody is trying to prove that, “I am greater than you.” How can you avoid conflict? And that conflict brings anger. It is ego hurting, it is ego feeling the wound, it is unsatisfied ego that creates anger. And nobody’s ego can be satisfied, that is impossible.

Even a man like Napoleon could not feel his ego absolutely satisfied, for the simple reason that he was not very tall — only five feet five inches. And that was always heavy on him, because he had many servants, guards who were very much taller than himself. And whenever he would see a tall person he would become angry. He would not be able to control himself. The great Russian leader, Lenin, had very small legs. His torso was bigger, his upper body was bigger; his lower body was very small, disproportionate. That kept him always angry. Even if somebody looked at his feet — which was natural, because they were so disproportionate that anybody looking would notice — he would become angry immediately. Anybody looking at his feet would create anger. He used to sit on a big chair — so big that his feet wouldn’t touch the ground — so nobody would think that he had small feet. But people had become aware of his big chair; they would look more closely and that would again create anger, because they would see that his feet were not touching the ground at all. Now, to be the dictator of the greatest country in the world, Soviet Russia, the largest country in the world and yet feeling hurt for a very stupid reason… that you have small legs!

You cannot have all and everything. You can arrange to have a few things, but a few other things will be missing. You may be tall, but you may be ugly. Any small thing is enough to hurt the ego. You may be very tall and very handsome, but unintelligent — you may have a very mediocre mind. You may have a very intelligent mind, but a very ill body. You may have a very strong body, a very good physique, but you don’t have any intelligence. You can’t manage all. You may have intelligence, a beautiful body but no money.

The world is vast and there are a thousand and one things and nobody can manage to have it all — nobody has ever been able to.

And the ego is bound to be wounded; the ego is very sensitive, very fragile, because it is very false. It is ego that creates the space in which anger arises. Hence Buddha says, LET GO OF ANGER, and immediately adds, LET GO OF PRIDE. Because unless you let go of the ego, you will not be able to let go of anger. Anger is a by-product. And one has to see very clearly the causes of things. Your minds are so jumbled up, in such a mess, you don’t know what is the cause and what is the effect.

A woman used to come from a faraway village to the city each year to give birth to a child. When she came for the seventeenth time the doctor said, “We always wait for you. You are the only one we can depend on that each year you will be here. When will you be coming the next year?”

She said, “I’m not coming anymore, because we have just discovered what is the cause of it all.” Seventeen children and they have just discovered the cause of it all! She said, “I am not coming anymore.” But that too is early. You may have lived thousands of lives and you have not yet been able to find the cause… why this anger? Our minds are in such a mess that you cannot make head or tail of it. You cannot sort it out. Everything is so mixed up with everything else: causes pretending to be effects, effects pretending to be causes, things which are not related at all have become accidentally associated with each other.

Betty Engrove, the singer, switched on her radio one morning and tuned in on two stations at once: one broadcasting calisthenic exercises and the other giving out cooking recipes. Here is what she heard: “Hands on hips, place one cup of flour on your shoulder. Touch your toes and mix them in one half cup of milk, repeat six times. Inhale one half teaspoon of baking powder, lower the legs and mash two hard boiled eggs, exhaling into a bowl and breathe naturally. Lie flat on the floor and roll in the white of an egg until it comes to a boil. In ten minutes lift your head from the fire and scrub briskly with a rough towel. Bend your knees, shake powdered sugar on them and serve it with soup.”

And your mind is tuned to so many stations, not just two! All kinds of things are going on inside the mind. One day just sit down and write whatsoever is coming into the mind. And don’t cheat, just write exactly whatsoever comes in and you will be surprised that this is your mind, this is where you have been living your life from. You will find it absolutely insane. It is good that we don’t have windows in the head, otherwise other people would look inside and they would be surprised; they would not be able to believe that this is you. YOU also will not be able to believe that this is what your mind is. But this is the reality. People never look inside. In fact, as if unconsciously, they suspect that if they look inside they will find insanity there. It is better not to look; avoid, keep the mind in the dark and remain occupied with something in the outside world. People keep themselves busy without business for the simple reason that it helps them not to look in. They have become alienated from their own minds.

If you look in, in the beginning of course it is going to be a chaos; but if you start watching the chaos, slowly slowly things start settling and you will be able to see what are the causes and what are the effects. Once you have known the causes, you are on the right track. Many people are fighting with the effects. You can never win, you are bound to lose. Effects are only symptoms.

You cannot fight with anger, because it is only an effect — the cause is ego. You cannot fight with causes either; unless you find that this is the ultimate cause. Anger is an effect; for anger, ego is the cause. But if you go deep down, watching your ego you will be surprised, it is also in its own turn an effect — an effect of unawareness. Unawareness is the cause. You can go on from anywhere — from greed, from lust, from anger, from jealousy, from possessiveness and you will always come to the ultimate cause: unawareness. So the only way to get rid of this mess, this chaos, is to be aware. And once you are aware, you need not repress anything, you need not even drop; things start dropping on their own, they start disappearing on their own. That’s what Buddha means when he says: LET GO OF ANGER, LET GO OF PRIDE. WHEN YOU ARE BOUND BY NOTHING, YOU GO BEYOND SORROW. And these are the two things which are keeping you tethered in an insane state. These are the two things which are creating all your sorrow and misery. Ego, hidden behind, goes on working, poisoning you. Anger is either expressed, then it poisons your relationships with people, or it is repressed, then it poisons your own being.

And slowly slowly, you find yourself in such a state in which many people would like to die; many people contemplate suicide for the simple reason that life is so painful and death seems to be a relief. Millions of people around the earth contemplate suicide — many of them try, many of them succeed too. And those who don’t contemplate suicide contemplate murder; they think that others are creating their trouble, so destroy others. Either they want to destroy others, or they want to destroy themselves, because they find no joy in life. When you don’t find joy in life, when you are not blissful, you become destructive, either a sadist or a masochist.

When your life is full of joy, unbounded joy, it is creative, then great creativity is born in you. Then you do something to contribute to the evolution of humanity, to the evolution of the whole universe. You add some beauty to it, you share your celebration with it. You make at least a few flowers bloom. You leave the world in great contentment, because creativity brings contentment. You leave this world joyously, because it has been such a beautiful opportunity to grow, to mature, to become aware.

It has been such a joy to create a few things and share those things with people; otherwise you live in sorrow and you die in sorrow.

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune. 

Discourse Series: The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 6

Chapter #9

Chapter title: Mind is a fraud

29 October 1979 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has spoken on ‘awareness, let-go, creativity, celebration, watchfulness, meditation, witnessing’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. Bodhidharma: The Greatest Zen Master
2. Christianity: The Deadliest Poison and Zen: The Antidote to All Poisons
3. The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha
4. The Discipline of Transcendence
5. From Bondage to Freedom
6. The Great Zen Master Ta Hui
7. The Invitation
8. Philosophia Perennis
9. Satyam Shivam Sundram
10. The Ultimate Alchemy
11. Vigyan Bhairav Tantra
12. The Zen Manifesto: Freedom From Oneself
13. The Book of Wisdom
14. Unio Mystica, Vol 1
15. Zarathustra: A God That Can Dance