According to Osho, ambition is rooted in fear and an inferiority complex cultivated by comparison-based education. True education dissolves inferiority rather than masking it with superiority, honoring each person’s uniqueness. When comparison ends, the race for status drops, ambition subsides, and a non-competitive mind flowers into love.
Ambition comes from being scared you’re not enough because you compare; stop comparing, trust your unique self, and love grows.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, is an ambitious mind a mind of fear and suffering from an inferiority complex?
Absolutely. An ambitious mind is a mind filled with fear. And within it there is inferiority—an inferiority complex. So the kind of education I am talking about will try to remove the feeling of inferiority from within each person. At present, our education teaches people to suppress the feeling of inferiority and to cling to a superiority complex. It teaches each person: forget your inferiority; if you are somebody, reach high positions, accumulate wealth—prove that you are somebody. Thus a reversed situation is created: the inferiority complex remains inside, and the race for superiority begins. On the surface one runs after superiority, while inside one remains inferior. True education—call it the education of love—will not create a sense of superiority within a person; it will only teach how the feeling of inferiority can be dissolved. Right now we are the ones who create the feeling of inferiority. Because if we…
When one person is defeated and the other has won, we garland the one who has won and disregard the one who is defeated. This is a sign of a perverted mind. This is a sign of a violent and a wicked mind. After all, what is so great that makes you garland a winner and disregard the one who is defeated? Don't you see the diseased mind of the person doing this? Should there be love and sympathy for the man who is defeated or not? Or should we become full of respect for the winner? If the education was right, love and respect towards the defeated would arise. One would feel amazed upon seeing this person who wanted to win, who wanted to defeat someone. What a violent attitude this man must have! There is violence in defeating someone, there is hatred in defeating someone.
As long as a person tries to keep separate from the reality of self, he in some form or the other, suffers from the fever of ambition In his ambition to be different from the self, he tries to cover and forget it. But is it the same thing to have a fact covered and to become free from it? Is the forgetfulness and giving up of a fact the same? No. Forgetting the inferiority complex and getting free from it are not the same. This is a very unwise reaction. Therefore, as you proceed with the treatment the disease keeps on growing. Every success of an ambitious mind is self-killing; because to the fire of ambition it serves as fuel. Success is achieved, but the inferiority does not diminish. Therefore, bigger successes become essential and unavoidable. Basically, this tantamounts to an increase in inferiority complex.
Osho, what is ambition? To live without ambition seems frightening, like starting a new life up from the beginning.
Competitiveness believes that whatsoever succeeds is right and whatsoever fails is wrong. That is the only criterion for an ambitious mind: the end makes the means right. For a non-competitive mind there is no question of thinking of others; you simply go on growing on your own. Your roots go deeper into Tao, into nature. Not that other trees have reached deeper so you have to reach -- you reach deeper for your own nourishment, you reach deeper for your own enrichment, you reach deeper because your branches can go higher. Only the deeper the roots go, higher the branches reach -- but it has nothing to do with others; others are accepted as they are. Nobody takes any note of others. Latifa, it is certainly starting a new life up from the very beginning. That's why Christ says: Unless you are born again you shall not enter into my…
Osho, you feel, sir, that the education we are giving in schools and universities, which is based on comparison, is harmful. If it is harmful, what measures should we take so that we can bring about a humanity without fear?
Certainly, education based on comparison is extremely harmful—poisonous, toxic. The moment we teach a person to think in terms of comparison, the moment we compare one person with another, we create inferiority, fear, ambition. He becomes afraid. For when we compare, we tell A, “B is superior to you; you must rise above B.” Instantly, we sow fear in A. He becomes frightened of life: how to get ahead of B? And even if he goes beyond B, what is the difference? C is standing ahead. There are thousands in the line ahead. He must be at the very front. The person becomes terrified, anxious. And when we compare a person with someone else, it means we do not accept that person. He is rejected in that very moment. As he is, he is not acceptable; only if he becomes something else will we accept him. We have insulted his…