[source: Osho International]
Tao: The Golden Gate, Vol 2 Chapter #4
Tao: The Golden Gate, Vol 2 Chapter #4
An intelligent person is one who comes to see that there is no need to compete at all. "I am myself, you are yourself I need not be you, you need not be me." A rose is a rose is a rose; it need not be a lotus. The lotus need not become anxious, worried about becoming a rose flower. The whole nature is in deep peace for the simple reason that competition has not poisoned it. There is no competition at all.
The biggest cedar of Lebanon has no ego about it, that "I am bigger than others." Just a small rosebush has no inferiority complex that, "I am so small." Nothing of superiority, nothing of inferiority, but each is unique. This stupidity has entered only human consciousness -- human consciousness is being conditioned for it.
Latifa, you ask me: WHAT IS AMBITION? It is a feverish state, it is an insane state. It is not healthy.
You say: TO LIVE WITHOUT AMBITION SEEMS FRIGHTENING... Of course, because you have lived with ambition for so long, it has become your very lifestyle. You have become identified with it; you don't know any other way of living. If you drop it means as if you are dying. And in fact that's what has to be done by a sannyasin: he has to die in many ways before he can be reborn. And this is a must: that you should die as an ambitious person, you should die as an ambitious mind completely, totally. Not even a trace of ambition should be left in you because even if a small trace is there it will start growing again. It is like a root: it will again sprout, again leaves will grow, again there will be foliage. It has to be completely thrown out of your being.Yes, it feels difficult, Latifa, very arduous, almost impossible in the beginning, because we don't know any other way how to live.
People ask me, "If we drop competitiveness, if we drop ambitiousness, then how we will grow?" and trees are growing and animals are growing, and the whole existence is moving and growing -- just you cannot grow without ambitiousness...
And with ambitiousness what has happened? Have you grown? Something wrong has grown in you; something like cancer in your being has grown. Yes, that cancer will not grow anymore.
If you drop all ambition, then a totally new process sets in: your natural growth takes over.
Then you are not competing with others; you are simply evolving each moment within yourself, not comparing.
If you are playing music and it is beautiful this moment, next moment it will be more beautiful, because out of this moment the next moment it will be more beautiful, because out of this moment the next moment is going to be born -- from where else it will come? -- next moment you will have a deeper music arising, and so on, so forth. You need not be competitive with other musicians; in fact, if you are competitive with other musicians your inner music will never grow. You may learn more tricks, strategies, techniques how to defeat them, how to go ahead of them by right or wrong means -- because competitiveness is so blind it does not bother at all what is right and what is wrong.
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 kingdom of God. A rebirth is needed.
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