According to Osho, neither Krishna nor Mahavira is superior; comparison is ignorance. Both indicate the same truth from different angles: violence is rooted in the egoic sense of ‘I am the doer.’ Mahavira highlights intention; Krishna stresses surrender—becoming a hollow instrument of the Divine. When the ‘I’ dissolves, nonviolence flowers, whether one fights or renounces.
No one is better—both teach that the real harm is the ‘I’ that thinks it’s doing; drop that, and you won’t hurt anyone.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, Krishna says “kill,” and Mahavira says that even the mere thought of violence is violence. Please tell us who is superior between the two?
In the smoke and dust, the hustle and bustle of the road, you will be lost: you won’t even have time to enter the temple or the mosque. If you want to pray, you must choose somewhere. But be mindful about the basis of your choice—choose because of “me,” not because of which of them is superior. Keep the relativity on your side. I cannot choose both together. My heart is not that vast yet. My vision is not so immense that I can hold both together. My house is not so spacious that I can host both as guests at once. Accept this compulsion and choose: the house is small; I can invite only one. The day you awaken, you will find both are two different faces of the same truth. But until then, you must decide. And decide very consciously. Do not leave this decision to your birth—“I…
A friend has asked: Osho, Gautam Buddha taught truth, nonviolence, not to lie, not to steal, not to do evil. But in Krishna’s Gita the path of violence is shown. Krishna teaches stealing, lying, and moving from sex to samadhi. So tell us: one who teaches the path of violence—can he be called God?
The teachings of Buddha and Mahavira are ethical and given with the ordinary person in mind. Krishna’s teachings are religious and addressed to a very extraordinary person. The teachings of Buddha and Mahavira can be understood even by a very ordinary intelligence; there is hardly any obstacle there. They consider the third-rate mind—the last rung of intelligence. Krishna’s teachings can be understood only by first-rate human beings. They are exceedingly subtle, and far higher than the teachings of Buddha and Mahavira. It will be a bit difficult to grasp them. We all understand that stealing is a sin; even a thief understands it. It is not only you who see it; the thief, too, knows stealing is wrong. But why is stealing wrong? Stealing can be wrong only if property is real; that’s the first premise. Money must be of great value, and personal ownership must be accepted; only then…
Osho, you said... then you will find that the devotee is God. The question arises: if one devotee prefers to be God and another wants to remain only a devotee, then which of the two is superior?
The one who wants to be God will not be able to be. And the one who wants to remain a devotee will become God. The question of superior or inferior does not arise, because only one of the two will happen. The one who does not want to be will be. The one who wants to be will be deprived. That very wanting is of the ego. But the matter is a little delicate. Sometimes humility too belongs to the ego. Beware that your humility may not be of the ego. Perhaps you are saying, “No, I don’t want to be,” because you know that those who refuse are the ones who attain. Then you are clever. Then your humility is adulterous. Your humility is not pure, not sacred, not virginal—it is like a prostitute. The one who wants to be God, whose ego says, “I must become God,”…
Osho, yesterday you said that when anger is watched consciously, it dissolves. But why is it that when sexual desire arises, even in awareness its intensity persists? Why is it so?
There is no entanglement in the breath. If you try to practice on anger… Anger is not happening every moment; it happens sometimes. And when it happens, it happens with such intensity that you are already going deep into it; so much is at stake in those moments that you may think, “We will look into awareness later; first let’s settle this now.” Lust is very deep, because existence has made it so deep; life depends on it. If lust were so easy that you decided and were freed, perhaps you would not even have been born—because many before you would have become free, and the possibility of your being would have been almost nil. But your parents, and their parents, did not become free; therefore you are. You too will not get free so easily, because your children are also to be—they are waiting: “Do not run away midway.”…
Osho, you just said that sannyasins like Buddha and Mahavira are sorrow-centered. But their sannyas arose out of a life of great splendor; renunciation was the next phase of their opulence. So you can’t put sorrow at the base of it.
But Gandhi was far removed in time; there are five thousand years between Krishna and Gandhi. So calling a five-thousand-year-old story “myth” is not hard. The Jains did not have such distance, so they could not call the story a tale—the event happened. Jain thought is as ancient as the Vedas; the first Jain Tirthankara is mentioned in the Vedas. The antiquity of Hindus and Jains is equal. The Jains could not deny the war, nor that Krishna had it fought. So what could they do? Had they had Gandhi’s convenience, they would have done what Gandhi did—who, in the body a Hindu but in mind deeply Jain—dismissed it as myth. The Jains could not; it was contemporaneous. They had to consign Krishna to hell. Their scriptures had to say that Krishna went to hell. If someone causes so great a violence and does not go to hell, then what…