What is the nature of cruelty?

Beloved Osho, I have watched a cat play with a mouse before killing it to eat. As if it's a game, the cat seems to get so much pleasure out of torturing the poor mouse. I have often found myself intervening on the poor mouse's behalf. Is cruelty an inherent quality of existence or a part of our biology, or what?

I said to the man, "You don't even have a ticket, and you were thinking that a seat may be booked for you! And you rushed, just pushed me aside. I don't understand what kind of man you are. But one thing I can understand: your worry. "Now I can see that you have not pushed me -- you were afraid of the conductor seeing you. He has thrown you out of three other places and he will be reaching here, so before he reaches you, go in and settle somewhere, pretend that you are asleep or something, or just go to the bathroom and stand there. Your hurry and your unmannerly behavior, your violent push to me, simply shows something is missing in you." People who are doing wrong things are always psychologically missing something, and if they can be helped just to meditate a little, it won't be…

Osho, you say that within every aspiration its opposite is hidden. In the longing for honor, humiliation lies concealed; in the very longing to live there is a fear of death. Why is there such a cruel law?

I said, “That is exactly why he still hasn’t forgiven you. Get someone a job and he will never forgive you. He will take revenge someday. For on that day you were so high that you granted him a job. Pain arose in his mind then—he had to fold his hands to you, had to wag his tail before you. He will take revenge sooner or later.” People say, “We do good, and people do bad to us.” It is sheer mathematics. The one to whom you did “good”—what else will he do but “bad”? He must settle the score. Because whenever you did your ‘good deed,’ you must have looked at him with such arrogance: “See, you little worm! You live by my grace.” I said, “Remember the day this man came wagging his tail before you and you got him the job. Today he is showing you the…

Osho, the famous psychologist Erich Fromm has said that after peering into the human mind I am astonished that in human society there are even acts of friendship, love, and charity. Kindly tell us which among human tendencies is more fundamental and stronger—love or hatred, violence or nonviolence, pleasure or pain?

So let us not begin with a wrong question. Wherever you see an extreme in life, understand that in the middle there will be a bridge as well. Is the night anywhere separate from the day? Is death anywhere separate from life? Death does not happen outside life; it happens within life. You do not die before death comes; you remain alive. When death comes, it finds you alive. It is not that first you die and then death comes. Death is within life, not outside it. And death is not even opposed to life. When you move aside, you make space for someone else—someone else can live. An old person dies, and a child can be born. Old leaves fall and new leaves sprout. If the old leaves do not fall, the new leaves will not appear. Think a little like this: had your elders not died, you could…

Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT IS A NATURAL DEATH? It is a significant question, but there are many possible implications in it. The simplest and the most obvious is that a man dies without any cause; he simply becomes old, older, and the change from old age to death is not through any disease. Death is simply the ultimate old age -- everything in your body, in your brain, has stopped functioning. This will be the ordinary and obvious meaning of a natural death. But to me natural death has a far deeper meaning: one has to live a natural life to attain a natural death. Natural death is the culmination of a life lived naturally, without any inhibition, without any repression -- just the way the animals live, the birds live, the trees live, without any split...

Osho, in the previous discourse you said that nonviolence is man’s nature and violence is man-made. Would you please clarify this again and tell us whether violence is not a nature-given fact?

But how unfortunate it is that no animal attacks one of its own kind—yet man does! And no animal ever kills without cause—this too is curious—except man. An animal does not kill without cause. If it ever kills, there is a need. It is hungry, so it kills. It has to defend itself, so it kills. Man kills without need. There is no need, and yet he kills. Sometimes it even seems that because he has to kill, he manufactures the need! He cannot live without killing, so he creates the need. Sometimes he creates the need in Vietnam, sometimes in Korea, sometimes in Kashmir. There is nothing necessary in it—neither in Kashmir nor in any Vietnam nor in any Cambodia. Nowhere is there a real need. But man creates the need, because to kill without a need would not look proper! Man is rational only in one sense: he…