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
When sadness comes, just sit by the side and look at it and say, "I am the watcher, I am not sadness," and see the difference. Immediately you have cut the very root of sadness. It is no more nourished. It will die of starvation. We feed these emotions by being identified with them.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of detaching from negative emotions to overcome them.
Rajneesh suggests that instead of being consumed by sadness, one should observe it from a distance, recognizing it as a temporary state rather than a defining part of oneself. By adopting the perspective of a 'watcher,' the individual can diminish the power of sadness, allowing it to fade away as it is no longer fed by identification or attachment.
In practice
During a workshop on mental health, one could share this quote to illustrate the value of emotional detachment.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't want people to be inspired or offended by what I do. If you determine your behavior by what [other people] want, you're screwed.
The best thing I did was choose the right heroes.
The present moment is the substance with which the future is made. Therefore, the best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment. What else can you do?
Afraid of decision, I buried my finer feelings in the depths of my heart and they died there.
Nobody has the right to shield any idea as so sacred it can’t be challenged. ... Almost all human progress is driven by people who stood up and said ‘I disagree’ with this idea that society at the time considered to be the most precious.’
Be a lamp unto yourselves! Work out your liberation with diligence! Fill your mind with compassion!
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