According to Osho, feeling anger toward your parents is natural but futile: it punishes you for their unconscious mistakes, deepens your own wounds, and helps no one. See that they merely repeated inherited conditioning without awareness. Transform anger into understanding and compassion, feel fortunate to learn, and resolve to end the cycle by parenting and relating consciously, so suffering is not passed on.
Being mad at your parents mostly hurts you; they didn’t know better, so choose kindness and break the pattern.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, I am angry with my parents for the first time. They are simple people, and I say to myself that it is not their fault that they have no understanding of Osho. But my anger is so much in conflict with my love that it hurts. I am so angry writing this that I can't even formulate the question. Can you help please?
Animals are not creating anything, they are simply producing carbon copies. And now science has come to a point where they have discovered that carbon copies can really be produced! It is a very dangerous idea. If we make banks -- and sooner or later we are going to make them; once an idea is there it is going to become a reality. And scientifically it is proved that it is one hundred percent possible... there is no problem. We can have banks in the hospitals for both the male sperms and female eggs. And we can create exactly the same two sperms and exactly the same two eggs, so two children are born which are exactly the same. One child will be released into the world; the other will grow in a fridge, unconscious, but all his parts will be exactly the same as the other person. And if…
Osho, my jewish parents are not happy that I have become a sannyasin. What should I do?
And he destroyed two cities completely. What happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Jewish God had done three thousand years before! He destroyed two cities for the simple reason that people were not behaving according to his idea of morality, they were becoming immoral. He destroyed two whole cities. Now, all the people could not have been immoral and even if all the people had been immoral, they could not have been immoral to the same degree. There were small children also; they could not have been immoral. They didn't know anything of morality or immorality. There were very old people also; they could not have been immoral. There were ill people who could not even get out of their beds. What immoral acts could they have been doing? But he was so angry that he destroyed two whole cities just to teach a lesson to humanity. And this young…
First, I had said: give love to your parents. Those who have asked the question are asking for love from their children for themselves. That is where the mistake lies. All parents ask for love from their children. Your parents must have asked it of you, and you could not give it. You too are asking your children, and the chances of receiving love are very small. Your children will ask their children in turn. What I said was that children should give love to their parents—not that parents should demand love from their children. And love never comes by demanding it; even if it does, it has no value. The moment demand arises, love dies. Secondly, a parent’s love for the child is spontaneous, effortless, natural. Just as a river flows downward, so too does this love flow downward. A child’s love for the parents is very unnatural, very…
Osho, my parents are so disappointed in me, they worry all the time. They have made my being here possible, so how can I turn from them? What do I owe to my parents?
Buddha said, "Please don't misunderstand me. The body certainly belongs to you, but not my consciousness. And my consciousness is my reality, not my body. And you are right that your father was an emperor and his father too, but as far as I know about myself I was a beggar in my past life and I was a beggar in a previous life too, because I have been searching for truth. My BODY has come through you, but you have been just like a passage. You have not created me, you have been a medium, and my consciousness has nothing to do with your consciousness. And what I am saying is that now I have come home with a new consciousness, I have gone through a rebirth. Just LOOK at me, look at my joy!" And the father looked at the son, not believing what he is saying. But…
[A sannyasin asks: In the lectures, I don't know, but it seems that you have looked at me very furiously, angry -- was this real? Was this just me? I don't know.] It must have been you. You must have some resistance, you must be afraid of me, so you projected it. Otherwise why should I be angry with you? There is no reason at all. You must be somehow afraid. When one is afraid one projects anger. If you are afraid of me you will think I am angry. Then you can rationalise your fear. Mm? then you can say 'This is why I am afraid -- because he is angry.' If I am not angry then why should you be afraid? Fear becomes irrational -- and fear is irrational!