All problems arise out of desire. Cut the root, and the whole tree disappears.

 

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful young girl taking a stroll through the woods. All at once, she saw an extremely ugly bullfrog seated on a log. And to her amazement, the bullfrog spoke to her.

’Maiden,’ croaked the frog, ’would you do me a big favour? This will be hard for you to believe, but I was once a handsome, charming prince; and then a mean, ugly old witch cast a spell over me and turned me into a frog.’

’Oh, what a pity!’ exclaimed the pretty girl. ’I’ll do anything I can to help you break such a spell.’

’Well, Miss,’ replied the frog, ’the only way that this spell can be taken off and I can be returned to a handsome young man again is for some lovely and pretty young girl to take me home and let me spend the night under her pillow.’

The young girl took the ugly frog home and placed him beneath her pillow that night when she retired. When she awoke the next morning, sure enough, there beside her in the bed was a very young, handsome man, and plainly of royal blood. And so they lived happily ever after, except that to this day her father and mother still do not believe her story.

And all your life is nothing but such stories, because all desiring creates only fantasies. All desiring is fabulous, all desiring creates illusions. You go on changing – you change one illusion to another, you go from one illusion to another, but you go on changing illusions. Always from one illusion to another illusion is your movement. When you understand the very mechanism of illusions as such, there is a break, a breakthrough.

An insight dawns on you. In that moment, not only this world becomes meaningless, ALL worlds become meaningless. In that moment, there is nothing to be desired. You don’t desire even desirelessness; there is nothing to be desired. Suddenly desire is not there, that smoke is not there, and the flame burns bright.

Remember not to change problems, from one illusion to another. It does not help much.

A little girl was deeply impressed by the clergyman’s sermon as to the separation of the sheep and the goats. That night after she had gone to bed she was heard sobbing, and the mother went to her to ask what was the matter. ’It’s about the goats!’ Jenny confessed at last. ’I’m so afraid I am a goat, and so I’ll never go to heaven. Oh, I’m so afraid I’m a goat.’

’My dear,’ the mother assured her weeping child, ’you’re a sweet little lamb. If you were to die tonight, you would go straight to heaven.’ Her words were successful in quieting the little girl, and she slept.

But the following night Jenny was found crying again in her bed, and when the mother appeared she wailed, ’I’m afraid about the goats.’

’But Mother has told you that you are a little lamb, and that you must never worry over being a goat.’

Jenny, however, was by no means comforted, and continued her sobs. ’Yes, Mamma,’ she declared softly, ’I know that. But I’m afraid – awfully afraid you’re a goat.’

From one problem to another… but the basic problem remains This is not the way to solve problems – one has to look at the very root from where the problems arise.

So Zen does not call anger the problem, Zen does not call sex the problem, Zen does not call greed the problem, Zen does not call aggression, violence, the problem. Zen calls the root problem desiring – and all other problems arise out of desiring. Cut the root, and the whole tree disappears.

Osho