"She said, 'Your Majesty, my husband treats me very mean.'

"Frederick the Great said, 'That is not my business.'

"But the woman persisted. She said, 'Not only that, Your Majesty, he speaks ill of you also.'

"Frederick the Great said, 'That is none of your business.' This is the legal mind.

"The legal mind is always thinking of law, never of love. The legal mind thinks of justice, but never of compassion; and a justice which is without compassion can never be just. A justice which has not compassion in it is bound to be unjust; and a compassion which may appear unjust cannot be unjust. The very nature of compassion is to be just. Justice follows compassion as a shadow. But compassion doesn't follow justice as a shadow, because compassion is the real thing, love is the real thing. Your shadow follows you; you don't follow your shadow. The shadow cannot be followed, the shadow has to follow. And this is one of the greatest controversies of human history: whether God is love, or law; whether he is just, or compassionate.

"The legal mind says 'God is law. He is just.' But the legal mind cannot know what God is, because God is another name for love. The legal mind cannot reach to that dimension. The legal mind always goes on throwing responsibility on somebody else: the society, the economic structure, history. Always the other is responsible, for the legal mind. Love takes the responsibility on itself: it is always 'I' who is responsible, not you.

"I have heard a Chinese parable. In Chuang Tzu's garden there was one rosebush which used to flower much. Then suddenly it stopped flowering. Chuang Tzu became, of course, worried – he had always loved that rosebush. He started showering his love on it, watching it more, taking more and more care. But nothing happened; the rosebush remained barren, unblossomed. Weeks passed, and then months passed.

"Then one day Chuang Tzu thought that something had gone basically wrong. It seemed the rosebush could not be helped, and he was just going to decide not to interfere, when the rosebush spoke up. And the rosebush said, 'Sir, nothing is wrong with me – it is because of the wrong surroundings that I cannot produce flowers."