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.
Your ego may be just a soap bubble. Maybe for a few seconds it will remain, rising higher in the air. Perhaps for a few seconds it may have a rainbow, but it is only for a few seconds. In this infinite and eternal existence your egos go on bursting every moment. It is better not to have any attachment with soap bubbles.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that ego is fleeting and ultimately insubstantial, much like a soap bubble.
Rajneesh uses the metaphor of a soap bubble to illustrate the transient nature of ego and self-importance. While the ego may seem significant and can rise high for a brief moment, it is inherently fragile and bursts continuously, reminding us that attachment to ego can lead to suffering. Embracing the impermanence of our ego allows for a more profound understanding of existence, prompting a detachment from superficial identities and fostering inner peace.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about self-awareness and humility, one could refer to this quote to emphasize the importance of letting go of vanity.
More from Rajneesh
All quotes βThe 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 β but that is an outcome, a by-product, that is not the source. The source is that one is love.
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'What is' is more important than 'what should be.' Too many people are looking at 'what is' from a position of thinking 'what should be'.
Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.
Knowing there is a world that will outlive you, there are people whose well-being depends on how you live your life, affects the way you live your life, whether or not you directly experience those effects. You want to be the kind of person who has the larger view, who takes other people's interests into account, who's dedicated to the principles that you can justify, like justice, knowledge, truth, beauty and morality.