According to Osho, ambition is the greatest poison: the urge to be ahead of others, built on an induced inferiority complex and constant comparison. It breeds greed, violence, competitiveness and war, leaving no space for love—the soil in which your real being flowers. Conditioned from childhood to 'be somebody,' we betray our innate uniqueness; ambition destroys peace, joy, and celebration, opposing your true life and destiny.
Ambition means trying to beat others, which kills love and makes you forget you’re already unique and enough.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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, 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…
That young man had no knowledge of his father. Nor did he know his gotra. He went to his mother, asked her and returned. And what his mother told him he repeated to the Rishi. He said: "Oh! god! I do not know my Gotra. Nor do I know my father. My mother also does not know my father. I asked her, and then she said that in her youth she was playing with many respectable persons and used to please them. She does not know from whom I was born. The name of my mother is Jabali. Therefore I am Satyakama Jabal. This is what she has asked me to tell you also'!. Haridrumat was very much moved by the simple true story. He embraced that young man and said: "My dear, you are definitely a Brahmin. So much faith in truth is the very symptom of a Brahmin.
Three sutras that are basic for life transformation, that are ultimate in a way. The first: Be nonambitious. KILL OUT AMBITION TOTALLY. UNLESS AMBITION IS KILLED, you will remain in misery. Ambition is the source of all miseries. What is ambition? 'A' wants to be 'B', the poor wants to be rich, the ugly wants to be beautiful. Everyone longs to be someone else, something other than what he is. No one is content with himself. That's what ambition is. Whatsoever you are, you are not content with it. This is ambition. Then you are bound to be in misery, because you cannot be anything else. You can only be yourself; nothing else is possible. All else is just futile, harmful, dangerous. You can waste your whole life, your whole existence. Whatsoever you are, you are. Accept it; don't desire it to be otherwise. This is what nonambition means.
A man constructs his own world. What I am is my contribution to the world. And by that very offering I become a participant in the creation of the world, in the creation of my environment. In that respect every man is a creator. It is essential to understand that each individual is a contributor to the ugliness of the world, that each individual is equally responsible for whatever happens in the world, be it violence, anger, hatred or total annihilation by war. The responsibility for this condition rests on each and every pair of shoulders. Everyone is responsible. No matter how unimportant he may be, every man is responsible for every war, even the most major catastrophe. The collection of individuals is what constitutes a society. What else is society? The individual himself is society. Man is drunk with ambition.