According to Osho, when your need for praise or fear of rejection is triggered, the mind slips into comparison and competition—the very foundations of despair. You create a self-made hell: jealousy, hurt, and constant measuring against others. The remedy is to stop comparing and simply be yourself—unique and incomparable. In that witnessing acceptance, jealousy dissolves and praise or rejection loses power.
When you chase approval or fear being disliked, you start comparing and suffer; drop comparisons and rest in being uniquely you.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Can cowardice and hypocrisy also be beautiful? Can I accept even my cowardice, my hypocrisy, my miserliness and a tendency towards privacy that you yourself have called "idiocy"? And if I accept such tendencies, all of which tend to bottle me up, how will I get free?
See the beauty of fear, see the alchemical work of fear. It is simply trying to prepare you for the situation so that you can accept the challenge. But rather than accepting the challenge, rather than understanding fear, you start rejecting it. You say, "Ashoka, you are such a great man, a great sannyasin, and you are trembling? Remember what Osho used to say, that there is no death, that the soul is immortal. An immortal soul, and trembling? Remember what Krishna said: 'Death cannot destroy you, fire cannot burn you, weapons cannot penetrate you.' Remember! And don't tremble: hold yourself in control!" Now you are creating a contradiction. Your natural process is that of fear, and you are bringing in an unnatural process to contradict fear. You are bringing ideals to interfere in the natural process. There will be pain, because there will be conflict. Don't bother whether the…
Osho, what is jealousy? Does our jealousy show that we are very far from aloneness?
This was my routine, that I would always go to the examination fifteen minutes late. This I followed my whole career in school, in college, at university; I would go fifteen minutes late. It was well known. The examiner knew that my seat had to be kept empty; I would be coming, but exactly fifteen minutes late. And I would leave the examination hall fifteen minutes before everybody else, before the end. The time allowed was three hours and I could see that the examination could be managed in two and a half hours; there was no need to waste half an hour more there. The teacher, who was there looking after the students to see that they were not copying and not doing some mischief, that somebody was not concealing a book, would say, "There is no hurry; there are fifteen minutes left. Why are you finishing?" I would…
Osho, when I see you, a longing arises in me that I too may one day touch heights like yours. Is this also comparison? Is it the outcome of an inferiority complex?
It happened: there was a Muslim fakir, Junoon. He lived in Egypt. He used to say that God has made everything perfect, for from the Perfect only the perfect can be born. As the Isha Upanishad says: from that Perfect, the perfect comes forth, and yet the Perfect remains. Junoon also used to say that God made everything complete. In the village there was a logician—a pundit as well. One day he came to hear Junoon. Junoon said that God has made everything complete. The logician said, “Wait!” He had brought a man with him—a hunchback. He was completely bent; he could hardly stand upright; his hands and feet were crooked; his back utterly hunched. The logician said, “Look at this man! Is he also perfect? And did God make him too?” Junoon laughed and said, “We have never seen a more perfect hunchback than this. I have seen many…
Beloved Osho, when I look at the moments when I feel separate from you, from my love and the rest of existence, it is usually the shadows of comparison and jealousy; and when I go deeper I usually get in touch with a deep insecurity and the feeling of being inferior. Would you please guide me on how I can lift these shadows and how to feel free of them?
It was not enough to complete the book -- he is the only man whose every book is incomplete. He will just go up to a certain length, then suddenly he will come upon a greater idea... he will drop the old project, start on the new project. But even his incomplete books are proofs of tremendous genius. Philosophers have been wondering what would have been the result if he had completed them, because he was moving in such new dimensions, never touched; where no mariner has ever reached -- virgin lands, which no philosopher had ever bothered about. And his insight is so deep, that to understand him, you need a very high quality intelligence; otherwise you cannot understand what he is saying. Even Martin Heidegger became a follower of Adolf Hitler, because of that German inferiority. And Adolf Hitler gave the promise, and he managed the promise --…
What is jealousy and why does it hurt so much?
You know your interiority, and only you know it, nobody else. And you know everybody's exterior, and their exterior people have made beautiful. Exteriors are showpieces and they are very deceptive. There is an ancient Sufi story: A man was very much burdened by his suffering. He used to pray every day to God, "Why me? Everybody seems to be so happy, why am only I in such suffering?" One day, out of great desperation, he prayed to God, "You can give me anybody else's suffering and I am ready to accept it. But take mine, I cannot bear it any more." That night he had a beautiful dream -- beautiful and very revealing. He had a dream that night that God appeared in the sky and he said to everybody, "Bring all your sufferings into the temple." Everybody was tired of his suffering -- in fact everybody has prayed…