“Greed is the root of fear. As long as you desire things you will be afraid to lose them.”
I have heard that Chuang Tzu, a great Chinese mystic, was once a minister to the king. After some time he resigned from the ministry and became a sannyasin, started living in a forest under a tree.
Once the king went to the forest to hunt and his friends told him, “Chuang Tzu, your ex-minister, lives under a tree nearby. If you are interested we can go and see him.”
The king replied, “Certainly, it would be worth seeing him. What has happened to Chuang Tzu? How has he changed after becoming a sannyasin?”
Chuang Tzu had been minister to the king for many years and the king knew him well. He also remembered how cultured a man he was.
So the king went there. He got down from his chariot and stood near Chuang Tzu.
Chuang Tzu was sitting with his legs stretched out, playing on his tambourine, and he remained in the same posture with his legs stretched. This was disrespectful! – the king was standing in front of him and he was sitting with his legs stretched out.
The king said, “Chuang Tzu, it is alright to be a sannyasin, but don’t forget your culture. Why do you continue to keep your legs stretched out in my presence?”
Chuang Tzu said, “On the day my greed disappeared, my fear also disappeared. Now I want nothing from you so I have no fear of you. In the past I used to fold my outstretched legs, not because I was cultured, but because of my greed. I was afraid that you would deny me your favours. Now that I myself have left behind all that you could have deprived me of, there is no more fear of you.
“You think that you are an emperor, but to me you are the same as any person passing by on the road. Once you were an emperor for me, but that was because of my greed: I could get many things from you which were not possible to get from anyone else. But now? – now you are just a passerby, just like anyone else. Now I don’t need to fold my outstretched legs to please you. Now there is no fear in me.”
As soon as greed disappears, the fear also disappears.
Osho, The Message Beyond Words – A Dialogue with the Lord of Death, Discourses on the Kathopanishad, Ch 3 (excerpt, translated from Hindi)
Series compiled by Shanti
All excerpts of this series can be found in: 1001 Tales
Featured image: wikimedia.org
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