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.
Why has marriage failed? In the first place, we raised it to unnatural standards. We tried to make it something permanent, something sacred, without knowing even the abc of sacredness, without knowing anything about the eternal. Our intentions were good but our understanding was very small, almost negligible. So instead of marriage becoming something of a heaven, it has become a hell. Instead of becoming sacred, it has fallen even below profanity.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that unrealistic expectations of marriage lead to disappointment and conflict.
Rajneesh articulates the idea that marriages often fail because they are held to unrealistic and elevated standards, aiming for permanence and sacredness without a true understanding of what those concepts entail. He highlights that while intentions may be positive, a lack of deep comprehension about the nature of marriage transforms what could be a blissful union into a source of suffering. The emphasis is on recognizing the flaws in how we view and approach marital commitments, acknowledging that they often fall short of the divine ideals we impose on them.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during a wedding seminar to emphasize realistic expectations in marriages.
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.
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.
Similar quotes
How many of us have conflicts with someone else- and how many of us pray for that person? We have individuals with whom we are competitive, or whom we dislike or have a quarrel with; but very few of us have true enemies in the martial sense. And yet if Lincoln could pray fervently- and contemporary reports indicate he did- for the people who were opposing him, how much more can we do for someone we just find a little irritating?
And do as adversaries do in law, strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.
It's hard to be the one always waiting. I mean, there's something to be said for the hero who charges off to battle, but when you get right down to it there's a whole story in who's left behind.
Whether we appreciate it or not, we live out our lives surrounded by an intricate pattern of social connections... We're all embedded in this network; it affects us profoundly and we may be unaware of its existence, of its effect on us.
Cutting negative people from my life does not mean I hate them, it simply means I respect me.
When the mind sees itself in the mirror of relationship, from that perception there is self-knowledge.