A man asked the Zen master: what is the scariest thing in the world?
The Zen master said: desire!
The man looked puzzled.
The Zen master said, "listen to me tell some stories."
Terrible gold.
A monk ran out of the woods in panic and happened to meet two very close friends walking at the edge of the forest.
They asked the monk, "what are you panicking about?"
The monk said, "it's terrible. I dug up a pile of gold in the woods!"
The two men couldn't help saying, "what a fool this is!" He said it was terrible to dig out the gold. It was really hard to understand. So they asked the monk, "where was it dug up?" Please tell us.
The monk said: aren't you afraid of such a powerful thing? It will eat people!
The two men said disapprovingly, "We are not afraid. Just tell us where we can find it."
The monk said: it's under the westernmost tree in the forest.
The two friends immediately went to find the place, and sure enough, they found the gold. One man said to the other, "that monk is so stupid that the gold everyone yearns for has become a cannibal in his eyes." The other person nodded and said yes.
They then discussed how to get the gold back.
One of them said, "it's not safe to take it back during the day, but it's better to take it back at night. I'll stay here and watch. You go and get some food, and we'll eat here, and then take the gold back when it gets dark."
The other man did what he said.
The man who left behind thought, "if only I had all the gold!" As soon as he comes back, I'll beat him to death with a stick, and the gold will be all mine.
The man who went back to get the food also thought: I'll go back and have enough to eat, and then poison his meal. If he dies, all the gold will be mine.
As a result, when he returned to the woods with his meal, another man beat him to death with a stick from behind and said, "Dear friend, gold forced me to do this."
Then he picked up the meal that the man had sent him and began to gulp it.
Before long, he felt very uncomfortable, and his stomach was burning. Only then did he know that he had been poisoned. On his deathbed, he said, "what the monk said was so right!"
This is really in line with the old saying: people die for wealth, birds die for food! It is all caused by greed, and desire turns the closest friend into a mortal enemy!
Farmers who buy land
A farmer wanted to buy a piece of land. he heard that there was a place where people wanted to sell the land, so he decided to go there and ask about it.
As a result, the people in that place told him: as long as you pay 1200 silver, and then you will have one day, from the time the sun rises until the sun sets below the horizon, how much land you can circle with steps, that is yours, but if you can't get back to the starting point, you won't get an inch of land.
The farmer thought: if I had worked hard this day and walked a little more, wouldn't I be able to walk in a big circle to get a large piece of land? This kind of business is such a bargain! So he signed a contract with the locals.
As soon as the sun was above the horizon, he strode quickly forward, and at noon, without stopping for a minute, he walked on, thinking to himself: endure this day, and then you can enjoy the reward of this day's hard work.
He walked a long way forward, and seeing that the sun was about to go down, he was very worried, because if he could not get back, he would not get an inch of land, so he took a shortcut to the starting point.
But the sun was about to set, and he had to run as hard as he could. At last, he was only two steps away from reaching the starting point, but his strength was exhausted and fell there.
The gap between human desire and reality can never be overcome, because human greed is endless and will never be satisfied, which is the greatest defect in human nature.
Buddha and Devil
There was a very famous painter who wanted to paint Buddhas and demons, but he couldn't find their original shape in reality, and he couldn't imagine what they looked like, so he was very anxious.
By chance, he went to the temple to pay homage and accidentally found a monk. His temperament deeply attracted the painter, so he went to the monk and promised him a lot of money on the condition that he be a model for the painter.
Later, after the completion of the painter's work, it caused a sensation in the local area. The painter said, "that is the most satisfactory painting I have ever painted, because the person who modeled me must have thought that he was the Buddha. His clear and serene temperament can move everyone."
The painter finally gave the monk a lot of money and fulfilled his promise.
Because of this painting, people no longer call him a painter, but call him a painting saint.
After a while, he was ready to start painting the devil, but it became a difficult problem for him. Where to find the devil in its original form? He visited many places and found a lot of fierce-looking people, but none of them were satisfied.
At last, he found it in prison. The painter is very happy, because it is so difficult to find someone who looks like the devil in reality. When he faced the prisoner, the prisoner suddenly burst into tears in front of him.
The painter was so strange that he asked the prisoner what was going on.
The prisoner said, "Why did you look for me when you painted the Buddha last time, and still me when you painted the devil now?"
The painter was surprised. Yu took a closer look at the prisoner and said, "how is that possible?" The person I am looking for for the Buddha is of extraordinary temperament, and you look like a pure devil. How can you be the same person? It's so strange that it's incomprehensible.
The man said sadly, "it was you who turned me from Buddha to devil."
The painter said: why did you say that? I didn't do anything to you.
The man said: ever since I got the money you gave me, I have gone to indulge in pleasure and splurge. In the end, the money was spent, but I was used to that kind of life, and my desire got out of hand, so I took other people's money and killed people. I could do any bad thing as long as I could get the money, and it turned out to be the way it is today.
When the painter heard his words, he was filled with emotion. He was amazed that human nature changed so quickly in the face of desire, and people were so fragile.
So he threw away the paintbrush guiltily and never painted again.
Once people fall into the trap of chasing material desires, it is easy to lose themselves, and it is very difficult to get out, so human nature cannot go with greed.
When the Zen master finished telling these stories, he closed his eyes and said nothing, and the man already knew the answer from these stories:
It turns out that the most terrible thing in the world is people's desires, the more people's desires, the more dissatisfied they will be, the more unhappy they will be, and the more troubles they will be.
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