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
Meditation means a state of unconditioned mind. Meditation is the process of undoing the harm that every society goes on doing to every individual - communist or Catholic, Jaina or Jew, it does not matter. I am not talking about any particular conditioning that is wrong; I am saying conditioning AS SUCH is wrong.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Meditation is a way to free the mind from societal conditioning and harm.
In this quote, Rajneesh emphasizes that meditation serves as a means to transcend the negative influences and conditioning imposed by society, regardless of cultural or religious identity. He argues that the act of conditioning itself is inherently problematic, and through meditation, individuals can work towards liberating their minds and reconnecting with their true essence, free from societal norms and expectations.
Themes
MeditationMindfulnessConditioningLiberationSociety
In practice
Example use cases
In a mindfulness seminar, one might say this quote to illustrate the importance of meditation in overcoming societal pressures.
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
I remember World War II when there were very few books, very little paper available. For me to walk into a shop or look at a list and see anything that I want, or almost anything, is like a kind of miracle.
Doris LessingRead
Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action.
Daniel GolemanRead
To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
Oscar WildeRead
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience.
Patrick HenryRead
No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.
EpictetusRead
Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading.
Oswald ChambersRead