According to Osho, perfection is a neurotic, lifeless ideal; no living person is perfect—and seeking it kills growth. Life is flow, and imperfection is beautiful. Don’t strive to be perfect; be whole and total. Feel anger, tears, and love authentically and fully. Totality, not perfectionism, brings aliveness, truth, and real transformation.
Nobody is perfect, and trying to be makes you stiff; instead, be fully yourself and feel whatever comes so you can grow.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Is there anybody in the world who is perfect?
And now I would like to say something very paradoxical: if you can be totally in anger, by and by it disappears. If you can be totally in anything, there comes a great transformation; the whole energy changes because you start understanding what anger is. It is not that you drop it by conscious effort, deliberately, but simply because of understanding it is no longer relevant. Or, if sometimes it is needed, there is no hindrance either. You can be angry. I love Jesus because he could be angry. He was so human. Buddha looks inhuman -- at least eh way he is depicted is inhuman. Mahavira is utterly inhuman -- at least the way he is described in the Jaina scriptures. That's how he looks... as if he has no heart. But that is the goal of the perfectionist. Jesus is more human. Many times Jesus goes on saying…
I have just recently been helped to discover that nobody is perfect and to let go of my fantasy of a perfect person. Now I am left with my feelings of loving and hating the same person and I find it difficult to live with such intense, seemingly polar opposites in myself. Anything to do?
It is said about Nero that he was so much obsessed with food that he had four doctors following him wherever he would go. And those four doctors' duty was to make him vomit. He would eat too much and the doctors would make him vomit, and then he would eat too much again -- immediately. To make it possible for him, so he could eat many times in a day, the only way was to help him vomit. Now this is madness. And how can you enjoy food when you are continuously vomiting? It is nauseating, the very idea is nauseating. And when you digest it you will throw your whole system into a chaos. It is the mind being destructive to the body. When you eat, enjoy it totally. But then there is a need for six to eight hours' fast -- only then does the hunger arise…
I am so confused. I want to perfect myself, but have lost all idea what effort to make in what way. Your presence makes me want to let go, but much else urges me toward a desperate programme of self-renewal. What can I do?
Perfectionism is a neurosis. It is an illness. And the more you try to become perfect, the more frustrated you will become. The goal of perfection has led the whole of humanity towards madness; the earth has almost become a madhouse. I don't teach perfection. What do I teach? I teach wholeness, not perfection. Be whole; be total; but don't think about perfection. Be whole. Whatsoever you do, do it totally. What is the difference? When you do it totally you are not worried about the result. You did it totally. You are finished. More you could not do. You are not holding anything; you have put all your energy in it, you were whole in it. Now if you fail, you fail. If you succeed, you succeed. But whether you fail or you succeed, you are fulfilled all the same. A deep contentment arises because you have done whatsoever…
What do you mean, Osho, by saying that life is perfect?
I mean exactly that. Life is perfect. But I understand why the question has arisen. The question has arisen because you have some ideas about perfection, and life does not fit with your ideas hence you call it imperfect. When I call life perfect, I don't mean that it fits with my idea of perfection -- I have none. When I call life perfect, I simply mean there is nothing else to compare it with, there is no ideal. This is all there is; it has to be perfect. Your perfection is always comparison, my perfection is just a simple statement of fact; it is not a comparison. You compare, you say, "Yes, this is perfect, that is not perfect," and you have a criterion of what is perfect. I have heard about a Sufi master who was talking to a few people in the coffee house and he said…
What is the desire for perfection?
ADHEERA, THE DESIRE FOR PERFECTION is the search for the lost womb. The paradise -- lost. The child is utterly happy in the mother's womb; that memory persists. It is not just a memory in the brain, it is in every cell of the body, every fiber of the body. It is all over you. That memory persists. Those nine months have been of such eternal joy, of such relaxation and let-go, it is not easy to forget it. Even though consciously you have forgotten about it -- because of the birth trauma you became disconnected consciously from it -- yet the unconscious still hankers for it. It tries in every way to reach to that lost paradise again. The whole of religion consists of that search, and the whole of science too consists of that search. The scientific endeavour is to create that womb outside -- with central heating,…