According to Osho, maintain positivity by shifting from reaction to response: pause, look within, and let action arise from freedom, clarity and compassion. If criticism is true, be grateful; if false, feel sorry for the other and reply gently. Engage in a fightless fight: no anger, no personal agenda—speak sincerely yet nonviolently. This effortless effort keeps your heart unburnt while your words illuminate.
Pause before speaking; see if the negativity is true, thank or kindly correct, and answer from calm love instead of anger.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, I am remembering the story you told the other day about the archer. Can you tell us more about how to have this attitude when spreading your words in a world of negativity and opposition towards you? Is there a fightless fight?
I am simply trying to make the causes clear to people: "You go on clinging to the causes, and you don't want the effects. You go on sowing seeds of a certain flower, but you don't like the flower so you destroy it -- but you don't stop sowing the seeds. This becomes your confusion, your conflict, your misery." The fight that you have to learn is not out of hate, it is out of love. It is not out of any revenge, it is out of understanding. It is not for your own gain, it is for the gain of those with whom you are fighting. Then it becomes a fightless fight. Then whether you succeed or fail does not matter; what matters is that you did your best. That brings contentment to you -- that whatever you could do you have done, and you have never been holding…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, I HAVE WRITTEN MANY BEAUTIFUL WORDS ABOUT YOU AND ABOUT YOUR BOOKS -- WORDS THAT SEEM TO COME FROM SOME PLACE EITHER BEYOND OR DEEP INSIDE WHEN THEY HAPPEN. AND AFTERWARDS I FEEL ALMOST ASHAMED, AS THOUGH I HAVE SAID SOMETHING WHICH I HAVE NO RIGHT TO SAY. IN THESE YEARS OF BEING WITH YOU, I KNOW I HAVE CHANGED. LAYERS AND LAYERS HAVE DISAPPEARED, AND A SILENCE HAS ARISEN WHICH IS NEVER SO FAR AWAY THAT IT FEELS OUT OF REACH. YET I OFTEN WONDER IF THE CLARITY I FEEL COMING OUT OF THIS SILENCE IS ONLY "SO-CALLED" -- SOME KIND OF ARROGANCE IN DISGUISE, OR SOME IMAGINING, UNKNOWN TO ME. I DON'T KNOW IF THIS IS A QUESTION, OR THREE QUESTIONS, OR AN APOLOGY. BELOVED OSHO, COULD YOU HELP ME SORT IT OUT?
Osho, in this intensely aggressive age, people with a feminine-hearted disposition find it difficult to live anywhere, because even education trains one to live aggressively. It feels as if people will force you to become like themselves. So what should one do?
Just now Morarji went on a fast. In that fast he tried to kill two birds with one stone: first, to make Indira bow down, and second, to seat Jayaprakash in his place. Because Jayaprakash’s name is rising rapidly. And it seems he has become the foremost in the opposition; that too is a pain. So if you go on a fast-unto-death, your name becomes foremost in the newspapers. These are big games. From small children to the aged, it makes no difference. Because the craving to gratify the ego remains. So among the Jews there is this tale that the thirty-six hidden saints wander the earth. Even though no one is helped by them, they cannot awaken anyone, no one listens to them, still they continue their work out of love. What do you think—that when I speak to you, it is with the assurance that you will surely…
Why bring in the past? The present is so vast -- the past is so narrow. Why look from a hole in the wall when you can come out and look at the whole sky? So try not to use words, but if you have to, then be very choosey about them because each word has a nuance of its own. Be very poetic about it. Use it with taste, love, feeling. There are feeling words and there are intellectual words. Drop intellectual words more and more. Use more and more feeling words. There are political words and there are religious words. Drop political words. There are words which immediately create conflict. The moment you utter them, argument arises. So never use logical, argumentative language. Use the language of affection, of caring, of love, so that no argument arises.
Osho, whatever you say appears so wholly true and fruitful that an intense urge arises to tell it all to others, to the whole world. As a result the mind inevitably starts gathering your words; it keeps thinking about how to convey them to others. At the same time, I also feel: until I myself have attained something, how can I say anything to others? So what should we do?
Rightly so. This is exactly what I was saying: let meditation and compassion grow together. If meditation is completed and you attain, but in the meantime you have not laid the foundation of compassion, you will be lost. The day your boat is ready, you will simply leave. So do not wait, thinking, “When I am complete, then I will speak.” Because then you will not be able to speak at all. While you are not yet complete, begin to sow the seeds of compassion. This continuous urge rising in you to tell others—this is the feeling of compassion. Because there is nothing to take from others, only to give. You want others to receive what is coming to you—this is a tender, love-soaked state. Do not take it as something wrong. Remember: only if you keep practicing speaking now, will you be able to utter a few words even…