According to Osho, greed is the compulsive stuffing of sex, food, money, power, and attention to escape the fear of inner emptiness. This emptiness is not death but the doorway to our real self and to God; forgetting it breeds neurosis and sustains power-obsessed society. Freedom begins by honoring inner emptiness instead of accumulating or seeking attention.
Greed is trying to fill a scared feeling of inner emptiness with things or praise, but that emptiness is where your true self lives—so feel it instead of stuffing it.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
What is greed?
GREED is an effort to stuff yourself with something -- it may be sex, it may be food, it may be money, it may be power. Greed is the fear of inner emptiness. One is afraid of being empty and one wants somehow to possess more and more things. One wants to go on stuffing things inside so one can forget one's emptiness. But to forget one's emptiness is to forget one's real self. To forget one's emptiness is to forget the way to God. To forget one's emptiness is the most stupid act in the world that a man is capable of. But why do people want to forget? We are carrying an idea given to us by others that emptiness is death. It is not! It is a false notion perpetuated by the society. Society has a deep investment in the idea, because if people are not greedy…
A friend has asked: Osho, is striving to get more of what is worth having also greed? What would you say about acquiring more wealth in order to give more in charity?
Among the enemies like lust and anger, we have, by and large, done a little injustice to greed. Greed is not, in the same way as anger and attachment, wholly harmful—or else I have completely misunderstood greed. A few things about greed need to be kept in mind. First, lust, anger, attachment—are nothing compared to greed. Greed is a very deep phenomenon. When a small child is born, there is no lust in him, but there is greed. Lust comes later; greed comes with birth. Anger is contextual. It arises when circumstances are adverse. But circumstances feel adverse in the first place because greed is inside. Anger is a by-product of greed. If there is no greed within, there will be no anger. When someone obstructs your greed, anger arises. When someone does not cooperate with your greed—becomes an opponent—anger arises. Greed is at the root of anger. Look deeper,…
Beloved Osho, when you spoke of greed, I was totally horrified. I have finally reached a point where I am willing to see how big a part it plays in my life, and the misery it brings with it. Could you please shed more light on what this thing called greed is, where it comes from? -- and perhaps offer some tools to help me?
It is strange that the word health, and the word holy both come from `wholeness'. When you are feeling one with wholeness all greed disappears. Otherwise... what have religions been doing? They have misunderstood greed as a desire, so they try to repress it: "Don't be greedy." Then one moves to the other extreme, to renounce. One collects -- the greedy person; and the person who wants to get rid of greed starts renouncing. There too there is no end. Mahavira could never recognize Gautam Buddha as enlightened for the simple reason that he still carries three sets of clothes -- just three sets of clothes, which are absolutely necessary. One you are using, one has to be washed, and one for emergency reasons... someday the clothes may not come from being washed or they are not dry, or it is raining the whole day. So three seems to be…
Osho, what is greed?
Sahajo, MAN FEELS MEANINGLESS, empty, hollow within, and wants to fill it, stuff it. The effort to fill it somehow is greed. That effort is bound to fail for the simple reason because whatsoever you accumulate remains on the outside; it cannot reach within you. And the problem is within and the solution you are seeking is without. For example, you are feeling meaningless inside you and you are trying to fill it by money. It is a stupid effort, unconscious effort, not seeing a simple point: that money can be gathered, accumulated, but it will pile up around you. You can have mountains of money around you... there have been people with mountains of money. One of the greatest rich men in the world was Andrew Carnegia. He left inestimable treasures, but when he was dying his biographer asked him, "Are you dying contented?" He opened his eyes and…
Osho, I must be the most greedy person in the whole world. What should I do about it?
Kamal, ARE YOU CONFESSING or bragging? The world is very big and what do you know about the whole world? It is impossible to be first in anything; not even in greed can you be the first, because people are moving in circles. Nobody is the first. Don't become so concerned with your greed and don't feel guilty either. Everybody is greedy. Unless you know that you are deathless you will remain greedy; greed comes because of death. You may never have thought about it, but greed exists because we are afraid of death. Because death is there we want to have as much of life as possible; we are greedy. We want to eat more, we want to have as many women or men as possible, we want to have as much money as possible, because death is there. "Soon everything will be finished, so before it happens have…