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 all the faces have been rejected and emptiness is left, you have found the original face. Emptiness is the original face. Zero is the ultimate experience. Nothingness - or more accurately NO-THINGNESS - is your original face.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that true understanding and self-awareness come from embracing emptiness and nothingness.
In this quote, Rajneesh speaks to the idea of discovering one's true self by rejecting superficial identities and societal expectations. The concept of 'emptiness' represents a state of pure awareness, stripped of distractions and false personas, leading to a profound realization of one's authentic being. This ultimate experience, described as 'zero' or 'no-thingness,' emphasizes that true essence lies in simplicity and the absence of ego, allowing for a deeper connection to existence itself.
Themes
EmptinessNothingnessSelf-AwarenessOriginal FaceSpirituality
In practice
Example use cases
During a meditation workshop, this quote can be used to inspire participants to explore their inner selves.
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
No important national language, at least in the Occidental world, has complete regularity of grammatical structure, nor is there a single logical category which is adequately and consistently handled in terms of linguistic symbolism.
Edward SapirRead
The only religion that ought to be taught is the religion of fearlessness. Either in this world or in the world of religion, it is true that fear is the sure cause of degradation and sin. It is fear that brings misery, fear that brings death, fear that breeds evil. And what causes fear? Ignorance of our own nature.
Swami VivekanandaRead
The Devil fears the word of God, He can't bite it; it breaks his teeth.
Martin LutherRead
There's no way to escape the fact that we've grown up in a violent culture, we just can't get away from it, it's part of our heritage. I think part of it is that we've always felt somewhat helpless in the face of this vast continent. Helplessness is answered in many ways, but one of them is violence.
Sam ShepardRead
Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality. If you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge.
Eliezer YudkowskyRead
I write a manifesto and I want nothing, yet I say certain things, and in principle I am against manifestoes, as I am also against principles.
Tristan TzaraRead