Do you know what attention is? Let us find out. In a classroom, when you stare out of the window or pull somebody's hair, the teacher tells you to pay attention. Which means what? That you are not interested in what you are studying and so the teacher compels you to pay attention - which is not attention at all. Attention comes when you are deeply interested in something, for then you love to find out all about it; then your whole mind, your whole being is there.
Now, is not the ambitious man destroying himself? That is
the first thing to find out, not to ask whether ambition is right or wrong.
Look around you, observe all the people who are ambitious. What happens when
you are ambitious? You are thinking about yourself, are you not? You are cruel,
you push other people aside because you are trying to fulfill your ambition,
trying to become a big man, thereby creating in society the conflict between
those who are succeeding and those who are falling behind. There is a constant
battle between you and the others who are also after what you want; and is this
conflict productive of creative living? Do you understand, or is this too
difficult?
Are you ambitious when you love to do something for its own sake? When you are
doing something with your whole being, not because you want to get somewhere,
or have more profit, or greater results, but simply because you love to do it -
in that there is no ambition, is there? In that there is no competition; you
are not struggling with anyone for first place. And should not education help
you to find out what you really love to do so that from the beginning to the
end of your life you are working at something which you feel is worthwhile and
which for you has deep significance? Otherwise, for the rest of your days, you
will be miserable. Not knowing what you really want to do, your mind falls into
a routine in which there is only boredom, decay and death. That is why it is
very important to find out while you are young what it is you really love to
do; and this is the only way to create a new society.