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
As long as the "I" is there, love cannot be. All that we call love is only desire, longing, passion and attachment; as long as ego is there, all these bind one.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True love cannot exist when the ego is present, as it leads to attachment and desire.
In this quote, Rajneesh suggests that genuine love is unattainable when the ego is in play. Instead of pure love, what we often experience is a mix of desire, longing, and attachment, which are influenced by our sense of self. The ego creates barriers that prevent us from fully giving and receiving love, leading to a tainted version of affection that is rooted in selfish motivations rather than selfless connection.
Themes
EgoLoveAttachmentDesireLonging
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about relationships, one might say, 'As long as the 'I' is there, love cannot be,' to emphasize the importance of selflessness in love.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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