Osho on Anger

Excerpt from Love’s Mysteries, p.19-21

“So the second thing to remember is: learn to transform your poisons into honey. How are they transformed? There is no simple process. In fact, to call it transformation is not right because you don’t do anything; you only need patience. This is one of the greatest secrets I am telling your. Try it: when anger comes, you are not to do anything, just sit silently and watch it. Don’t be against it, don’t be for it. Don’t cooperate with it, don’t repress it. Just watch it, be patient, just see what happens…let it rise.

Remember: don’t do anything in the moment of anger – wait. Just give it a little time and wait…and you will be surprised. And one day you will understand that if you can wait enough, anger itself becomes compassion. It is a wheel; it is moving on its own – You are in a hurry. Just as night becomes day if you can wait a little, in the same way, anger becomes compassion if you can wait a little. The same energy – just patience has to be added to it, nothing else. You try it.

Act when the saint is uppermost – that’s all. Don’t act when the sinner is uppermost, don’t act, otherwise you will repent, you will create a chain of reactions and you will get into karma. That is the whole meaning of getting into karma. Do anything when you are in a negative moment and you will be in a chain, and then there is no end to it. When you are negative you do something, the other becomes negative, the other is ready to do something – negativity creates more negativity. Negativity provokes more negativity, anger brings more anger, hostility brings more hostility, and things go on and on and on…and people have been entangled with each other for Lives together. And they continue!

 

Wait. When you are angry, it is the moment to meditate. Don’t waste this moment anger is creating such great energy in you. It can destroy. But energy is neutral – the same energy that can destroy, can be creative. The same energy that can shatter can shower life – just wait. Waiting, and not doing anything in a hurry, one day you will be surprised, seeing the inner change. You were full of anger, and then anger goes on and on and comes to a climax…and then the wheel turns. You can see the wheel is turning, the anger is relaxing, and energy is being released and, now, you are in a positive mood – the creative mood. Now you can do something. Do it. Always wait for the positive.

What I am saying is not repression. I am not saying to repress the negative, I am saying – watch the negative. Remember the difference is there. I am not saying to sit on top of the negative, forget the negative, do something against it – no. I am not saying when you are angry, smile – no; that smile is false, ugly, phoney. When you are angry, then close the room, keep a mirror in front of you, see your angry face yourself. There is no need to show it to anybody else. It is your business, it is your energy, it is your life, and you have to wait for the right moment. Go on looking in the mirror: see the red face, the red eyes, the murderer there.

Have you ever thought that everybody carries a murderer inside? You also carry a murderer inside. Don’t think that the murderer exists somewhere else – somebody else is a murderer who commits a murder – no, everybody has the possibility to commit a murder. You carry the suicidal instinct in you.

Just look in the mirror: these are your climates – you have to be acquainted with them. This is part of the growth towards self-knowledge. You have heard so much, from Socrates till today: ‘Know thyself?’ – but this is the way to know thyself. ‘Know thyself does not mean sit and silently and repeat: I am Brahma, I am Soul, I am God, I am This’ – all this is nonsense. ‘Know thyself’ means know all your climates, all possibilities – the murderer, the sinner, the criminal, the saint, the holy man inside you, the virtue, the God, the Devil – know all the climates, the whole range of it, and by knowing it you will be discovering secrets, keys.

Quote from Posthumous Fragments by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

You will see that anger cannot be there forever – or can it be? You have not tried it, so try it – it cannot be there forever. If you don’t do anything, what is going to happen? Can anger hang there forever and ever? Happiness comes and goes, unhappiness comes and goes. Can’t you see a simple law? – that everything changes, nothing remains permanent. So why be in a hurry? Anger has come – it will go. You just wait, have a little patience. Just look in the mirror and wait. Let anger be there, let your face go ugly and murderous – but wait, watch.

Don’t repress and don’t act according to the anger, and soon you will see that the face is becoming softer, eyes are becoming calmer, the energy is changing – the male turning into female…and soon you will be full of radiance. The same redness that was anger, now is a certain radiance – a beauty on your face, in your eyes. Now go out; the time has come to act.

Act when you are positive. Don’t force positivity, wait for the positivity to come on its own. This is the secret – when I say, ‘learn to transform your poisons into honey,’ this is what I mean.”

Osho International Foundation, 1998