We start making every child ambitious, and ambition means you cannot love; ambition is anti-love. Ambition needs fight, ambition needs struggle, ambition needs you to use others as a means.
RajneeshRead
Nothing is secure. That is my message. Nothing can be secure, because a secure life will be worse than death. Nothing is certain. Life is full of uncertainties, full of surprises - that is its beauty! You can never come to a moment when you can say, "Now I am certain." When you say you are certain, you simply declare your death, you have committed suicide.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Life is inherently uncertain, and this uncertainty is what gives it beauty and meaning.
In this quote, Rajneesh emphasizes the idea that security and certainty are illusions that can prevent us from fully experiencing life. He suggests that the unpredictable nature of life—with its uncertainties and surprises—should be embraced, as it adds richness and depth to our existence. The moment we cling to certainty, we may be stifling our potential for growth and joy, equating it to a metaphorical death.
Themes
UncertaintyLifeBeautyExperienceEmbrace
In practice
Example use cases
A motivational speaker might use this quote to encourage an audience to embrace life's unpredictability.
More from Rajneesh
All quotes →The technique of positive thinking is not a technique that transforms you. It is simply repressing the negative aspects of your personality. It is a method of choice. It cannot help awareness; it goes against awareness. Awareness is always choiceless.
RajneeshRead
Only those persons who have lived, really lived, are ready, welcoming, receptive, thankful to death. Then death is not the enemy. Then death becomes the fulfillment.
RajneeshRead
Creativity has two possibilities. One is that it arises out of your silence, love, understanding, your clarity of vision, your intimate friendliness with existence - then creativity is healthy. But if it does not arise out of meditation, out of silence and peace and understanding and love, then there is a danger. It may be arising out of your confused mind. It may be arising out of your insanity.
RajneeshRead
There is no separate art of life. If you know how to allow poetry, if you know how to allow dance, if you know how to allow love - if you know how to ALLOW, then you know the art of life. In the allowing, in the let-go, in the surrender, is the art of life. How not to be and to let God be - that is the only art of life.
RajneeshRead
Love is not a relationship, love is a state of being; it has nothing to do with anybody else. One is not "in love", one is love. And of course when one is love, one is in love – but that is an outcome, a by-product, that is not the source. The source is that one is love.
RajneeshRead
Similar quotes
By means of microscopic observation and astronomical projection the lotus flower can become the foundation for an entire theory of the universe and an agent whereby we may perceive Truth.
Yukio MishimaRead
Be conscious first of thyself within, then think and act. All living thought is a world in preparation; all real act is a thought manifested. The material world exists because an idea began to play in divine self–consciousness.
Sri AurobindoRead
What is character? It is that quality of man which is going to make a man, in an hour of strain, do the just and, if possible, the generous thing.
Douglas Southall FreemanRead
I think that everyone is kind of confused about the information they get from the media and rightly so. I'm confused about the information I get from the media.
Bob WoodwardRead
...skepticism can never provide firm ground under a man's feet. And perhaps, after all, we need firm ground.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynRead
We are a unique ape. We have language. Other animals have systems of communication that fall far short of that. They don't have the same ability to communicate complicated conditionals and what-ifs and talk about things that are not present.
Richard DawkinsRead