Ambition

 

 

Ambition is the root cause. Try to understand your ambitiousness; your effort to be somebody in the world will drive you mad. Just be nobody and then there is no problem. Drop ambitiousness and start living, because the ambitious person cannot live; he always postpones. His real life will always be tomorrow -- and the tomorrow never comes. The ambitious person is bound to be aggressive and violent, and the violent person and aggressive person are bound to go mad.

 

The non-ambitious person is peaceful, loving, compassionate. The ambitious person is always in a hurry, running, rushing towards something which he vaguely feels is there, but he will never find it. It is like the horizon; it does not exist, it only appears. The non-ambitious person lives herenow, and to be herenow is to be sane. To be totally in this moment is to be sane.

 

-Osho, “Zen: The Special Transmission, #2, Q4”

 

 

 

Ambitions are infectious. Avoid ambitious people, otherwise something of their fever is bound to infect you, is bound to affect you. You may start moving in a direction which is not yours, you may start doing things which you had never thought to do in the first place, but just because you fell in company with somebody. . .

 

Just look at your life -- it is almost all accidental. It is not essential, it is accidental. Your father wanted you to be a doctor so you are a doctor. Now it was his ambition that his son should be a famous doctor; he fulfilled his ambition. He used you as a means to fulfill his ambition. This is not love -- this is exploitation.

 

-Osho, “Guida Spirituale, #5”