According to Osho, self-judgment is a social disease planted by parents, teachers, and culture; it feeds the ego’s lust for power and turns life into mutual condemnation, making love and friendship impossible. See this conditioning clearly, stop cooperating with the inner critic, forgive yourself, and drop judging others; from this awareness, the heart opens naturally and joy and maturity blossom.
Notice the scolding voice you learned from others, let it go, be gentle with yourself, and your kindness will naturally open your heart to others.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, I am constantly criticizing myself and judging other people. This makes me feel divided and tense, and I cannot establish a real contact with people or nature. I want to open my heart and I don't know how to do it. Please, could you say something about this?
I said, "You are right: that was the place from where it came and through where it got out. And if you really want the proof...." I pulled out the snake from my bag and I showed him that this is the snake. "You are such a fearless man, and this is only a rubber snake. And it just touched your face -- two, three times, not much -- and such a scream came out of you. I was not expecting that it would create so much fear in you." He was so ashamed that that very evening he resigned and escaped from town, because everybody was asking him, "What happened with the snake? Was it real? -- because somebody said that it was just a rubber snake and that some boy in your class had accepted your challenge." The whole town was talking, and it became so difficult for…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHY DO I JUDGE SO MUCH? It is a great disease. And we carry the disease from generation to generation. Everybody is brought up in a climate of continuous judgment, condemnation, criticism. This makes people hard, this makes people without compassion. And the society needs people who don't have compassion, who are hard, and who are always putting everybody down. Your continuous habit of judging is nothing but an effort to put everybody lower than you. When you criticize something, when you judge someone, you have already taken a higher position. You don't know the other person. You don't know his life story, you may have known a little fragment. On that fragment, you judge the whole life of a man -- unashamedly.
I heard you say existence is non-judgmental, but our minds are full of judgments. Where do they come from? Are they also related to the idea of god?
Existence is non-judgmental. That is one of the greatest contributions of Zen to humanity: that you need not be a saint to be awakened. You can be awakened from any angle, from any dimension of life. It is almost like somebody is dreaming that he is murdering someone, and somebody else is dreaming a very sweet dream that he is serving the poor people. Somebody is dreaming that he is very virtuous, a saint, and somebody is dreaming that he is a murderer, the worst kind of criminal. Do you think the saintly dreamer will wake up sooner, and the sinner and the criminal will take a little longer time to wake up? They will both wake up exactly at the same time, by the same method. Just throw one bucket full of ice-cold water on both and they will jump out of their beds. It does not matter whether…
How to drop judging people?
From the outside that's what we can judge. From the outside it is always wrong. Seeing it again and again, understanding it again and again, penetrating it again and again, you will not need to drop judgements, they drop of their own accord. Just watch. Whenever you judge, you are doing something foolish. It does not apply to the person at all, it can apply only to the act. And that act too is taken out of context because you don't know his whole life. It is as if you tear a page from a novel and you read it and you judge the novel by it. It is not right; it is out of context. The whole novel may be a totally different thing. You may have taken a negative part, an ugly part. But you don't know anybody's life in its totality. A man has lived for forty…
Beloved Osho, finally I have come home to myself with a silence and serenity never known before. I feel like a flower bud ready to open, yet I do not feel in touch with the energy of love and joy that would allow this flower to bloom. It is almost as if I have not yet fully opened my heart to myself. Osho, am I missing something or is it just a matter of time?
I can see it. I don't know where you are, who you are, but I can see through your question -- the bud cannot be there. Your question is very revealing. You have not reached home; perhaps some caravanserai ... an overnight stay but in the morning you have to move on. Home is when everything stops -- time and mind -- and nothing moves. Home is an eternal moment which begins but never ends. Home is when there is absolute nothingness ... no self, no I. In this nothingness only buds of silence and serenity can grow. And if you are open towards the universe, then it showers with nourishment and all buds start opening on their own accord. Meditate, so that you can go beyond mind and self. Certainly meditation will take a little time. Because you are so full of bullshit you will have to clean the…