According to Osho, any loss has no real compensation; trying to 'make up' for it—whether by retaliatory anger or by parading forgiveness—only feeds the ego, often more subtly. Crude conceit becomes refined vanity, harder to detect, so you end up more entangled. See the loss as loss, without egoic balancing acts.
When you lose something, you can’t fix it by getting mad or by showing off how ‘forgiving’ you are; that just grows your ego.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
The loss that has happened cannot be made up, can it?
Whatever loss has happened to you has no compensation. And this that you are thinking—that when we got angry and abused someone our ego was nourished, and now that we are asking for forgiveness our ego has been dissolved—do not fall into this mistake. Perhaps now the ego has been nourished even more. Then you were angry; now you have gone home as “forgiving” as well. (The audio recording of the question is not clear.) Yes, then the pleasure you took in ego was through anger: you abused me, so I will hurl at you an insult twice as weighty. Now you are going home thinking, “How forgiving a being I am, how magnanimously forgiving I am, that I asked them for forgiveness...” Then the conceit was what you might call very natural; now it is very sophisticated. That is the difference. That was a simple, straightforward conceit: you abused…
Osho, when someone deceives and betrays me, or uses me like an object—what should I do in such a situation? I don’t want to hurt that person either. How can I find peace of mind? I feel broken.
In the tangles of life, others are never responsible; the whole responsibility is our own. You say that when someone deceives and betrays you, your heart is hurt. Think a little: the heart is not hurt by someone else’s deceit or betrayal. It hurts because you wanted that no one should deceive or betray you. It is the fruit of your desire. And it is not in your hands to make the whole world comply with your desire. It is in no one’s hands. But we have become accustomed to shifting the responsibility for everything onto others. It seems easy; it gives relief—the relief that I am not responsible. Now someone is cheating, therefore I suffer—so we say. But why did you want that no one should cheat you? And where is it in our hands to create a world in which there is no deceit and no hypocrisy? There…
Osho, why is it so difficult to forgive, to stop clinging to hurts long since past?
It is very essential to understand because you are all disciples here, and you all will be carrying some grudge or other against me, for the simple reason because I am trying to destroy your ego. That I have to do; that's the function of the Master, to destroy your ego. And you can become very revengeful, and you can carry deep wounds through it. Katyayani, you ask me: WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO FORGIVE, TO STOP CLINGING TO HURTS LONG SINCE PAST? For the simple reason that they are all that you have got. And you go on playing with your old wounds so that they keep fresh in your memory. You never allow them to heal. A man was sitting in a compartment in a train. Across from him was sitting a Catholic priest who had a picnic basket beside him. The man had nothing else to…
[The teacher says: I find that so often I do things without any awareness. Like, something happens and I just react.] By and by you will become aware. And also remember that not only you are the teacher -- they are also teachers. So teach them and also learn from them... Let it be a sharing. You can give them knowledge -- they can give you a more valuable thing, and that is learning. You can give them information, and they can give you something of the chaotic life -- which is more valuable. You can help them adjust to society. They can help you to adjust to God... they are closer to God. By and by they will drift away.... So also learn from them, and feel humble.
This is something to be understood. If you can love a man, you can forgive him and forget him also, but if there is a man with whom you have tried all the ways possible and you could not succeed, your ego is carrying something. Your ego is carrying a sort of defeat, a failure, that you were not able to conquer this man. And he is feeling very good about it -- another woman defeated again! He has become harder still than before he met you because now he knows that he has dropped one temptation. He is on a higher esoteric level now. This is what is pinching and hurting you -- that you couldn't destroy this ascetic. That's the anger, nothing else. [Osho said it was not good to carry this, and that she should recognise that the anger was because of a sense of defeat.