According to Osho, people inevitably gather enemies because even good deeds trigger resentment, misunderstanding, and backlash—'no good deed goes unpunished.' Over a lifetime, grievances stick while friendships are more fluid, so 'enemies accumulate.' Recognize this as a fact of life, not a personal failure: do what is right without bargaining for approval, and don’t be derailed by opposition.
Even when you do good, some people will dislike it and hold grudges, so enemies pile up; accept this and keep doing what’s right.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Question: BELOVED MASTER, WHY DO YOU HAVE SO MANY ENEMIES? Gayan, remember two fundamental laws. One is: No good deed goes unpunished. And second: Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate. The sixth question:
A: It is absolutely necessary. Life is a dialectic. If you want friends, create enemies, otherwise you can't have friends. If you want people to understand you, irritate few people to misunderstand you. They are part of my work. They may not know it, that they are helping my work. I can be nice to all, but then there will be no work possible. It is not difficult for me to be nice to all. It will give me respectability, but the work will suffer, and I am ready to sacrifice all my respectability to the work. And you can see it. I have created enemies in the world; I have created friends in the world. Stronger the enemies become, stronger my friends become. You cannot have only friends, otherwise they will be just lousy; they will not be of any use.
Question: BELOVED OSHO, BECAUSE OF YOUR GENIUS IN COMBINING AND THEN GOING BEYOND THE MATERIAL AND THE SPIRITUAL, AND BECAUSE YOU SEEM TO HAVE AN ABUNDANCE OF BOTH WORLDS, I THINK THAT MANY NON-SANNYASINS AND SANNYASINS FEEL JEALOUS OF YOU. PEOPLE RESENT AND DON'T WANT TO FEED ABUNDANCE. IF THEY FEED ANYTHING, THEY FEED POVERTY. IF YOU WERE SITTING IN A CAVE, NAKED, COLD, AND MEDITATING, IT WOULD BE ONE THING, BUT YOU ARE NOT. SANNYASINS WHO NEVER DREAMED OF HAVING A ROLLS ROYCE SEEM TO YEARN FOR ONE MORE THAN FOR THE STATE OF MEDITATION EVEN AFTER SPENDING YEARS WITH YOU. YOU SEEM TO BE SPARKING GREED FOR THE MATERIAL, RATHER THAN A YEARNING FOR THE BEYOND -- OR AT LEAST THAT'S THE MESSAGE THAT'S BEING RECEIVED BY SOME. COULD YOU COMMENT. I will teach you to love yourself.
Beloved Osho, I have heard you say that the friend will not change a person,but that the enemy will. Another time, I heard you say that love will change both. Would you please comment on love and enmity? How do they relate to one another? Why do lovers sometimes look like enemies to one another?
Anand Nadam, I have been looking at your questions. It seems your mind is consistently searching for some contradiction in my statements. Perhaps you are not even aware of it. And because you are so preoccupied that you cannot even see when there is no contradiction, you start seeing one just because you want to see it. It is one of the problems with the mind: whatever it wants to see, it can manage to see it; whether it exists or not is not the point. The mind has a tremendously creative imagination. And once it takes a certain standpoint it goes on finding things which have no existence anywhere, but to the mind they appear absolutely real. Before I answer your question, you have to be reminded that your being a disciple does not mean that you have to agree with me on anything whatsoever, except meditation. Our relationship…
Question: OSHO, PLEASE DESCRIBE AN ORTHODOX RAJNEESHEE. Those wings had suddenly appeared, and you were flying high -- "higher and higher, Osho, higher and higher." Those wings... then you look all around. and they are not there. Suddenly you feel lower and lower, lower and lower. You are not even on plain ground, you are falling into a ditch! Love is momentary -- it fades. But hate seems to be far stronger. You fall in love, you fall out of love. But once you fall in hate.... It is rarely heard that a man has fallen out of hate. He is stuck, glued. Hate has some force, it keeps you glued to it. Enemies remain enemies for generations. In my neighborhood -- and neighbors are the worst enemies; where else can you find better enemies than your neighbors? Perhaps it was an afterthought of Jesus Christ's....