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
Happiness is threatening and misery is safe - safe for the ego. Ego can exist only in misery and through misery. Ego is an island surrounded by hell; happiness is threatening to the ego, to the very existence of the ego. Happiness rises like a sun and the ego disappears, evaporates like a dewdrop on the grass leaf.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Happiness challenges the ego, while misery provides it a sense of security.
In this quote, Rajneesh suggests that the ego thrives in a state of misery because it can define itself in contrast to suffering. Happiness, on the other hand, poses a threat to the ego's existence, as it fosters a sense of unity and dissolution of self-identity, similar to how sunlight evaporates dew. The essence of the quote highlights the conflict between the pursuit of true happiness and the ego's attachment to its own suffering and identity.
Themes
HappinessEgoMiserySelfIdentity
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about overcoming personal challenges, one might refer to this quote to illustrate how embracing happiness can dissolve the ego.
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
You can make yourself happy or miserable - it's the same amount of effort.
Ray BradburyRead
Coarse rice to eat, water to drink, my bended arm for a pillow - therein is happiness. Wealth and rank attained through immoral means are nothing but drifting clouds.
ConfuciusRead
Only you can take responsibility for your happiness..but you can't do it alone. It's the great paradox of being human.
Simon SinekRead
I've chosen to treat my life more like a party than something to stress about.
Martin ShortRead
No matter our circumstances, no matter our challenges or trials, there is something in each day to embrace and cherish. There is something in each day that can bring gratitude and joy if only we will see and appreciate it.
Dieter F. UchtdorfRead
I'm really happy to be me, and I'd like to think people like me more because I'm happy with myself and not because I refuse to conform to anything.
AdeleRead