What is buddhahood? Buddhahood is getting out of this whole conditioning. This is cutting the root.

You can go in the garden and look. One thing you will be surprised about: when a new tree is planted, naturally the tree has to adjust with the other trees which are already in existence. It has to find ways. It can grow its branches only where there is a space. If other trees are already occupying that space, it cannot grow in those directions. It has to find a way in the existing situation, it has to adjust. Maybe it cannot grow branches on all sides, it cannot be balanced – it can grow branches only to the north because there is some space there, the other three sides are already occupied. It becomes lopsided, it grows a branch too much toward the north and all the other sides remain ungrown; it is lopsided. And this is on the surface. If you go deep, the same is happening with the roots. There are already roots of other trees; they have already taken possession of the earth. The new tree has to find ways; it has to avoid the places that have been already occupied, it has to find new sources of water if it can. It cannot grow its roots as they would have grown naturally if there had been no other trees around.

But that is not possible for a child. And the same happens to humanity: the child grows branches in directions which are available. The child grows roots: those roots become entangled with the roots of the parents. And they remain entangled if you don’t cut them. It is very difficult to find a really grown-up person. People only grow old, they never grow up. And growing old is not growing up, they are not synonymous. Growing old is moving toward death, growing up is moving toward more life, more abundant life.

Great decisiveness is needed on your part. People remain entangled. A man may be fifty, but he still behaves with his wife as if he were with his mother. He still expects the same from his wife as he used to expect from the mother. He is a child. The woman may be fifty, but she still expects from the husband the same kind of behavior as she expected from the father. This is not growing up. And because it cannot be met – the husband is not your father and the wife is not your mother – then there is frustration. This is entanglement with the roots.

You are still entangled. The father may be dead, the mother may be dead, but your roots still go on moving in the same direction they learned to move in your childhood. Now the space is available, but you have forgotten how to grow in those spaces which have become newly available. Space becomes available every day, but you have forgotten, completely forgotten, or a few parts of you have died, they have simply disappeared. It is very difficult to find a man who is whole. Somebody’s hands are too big, and the brain too small. Somebody’s brain is too big, and the heart is almost non-existing, zero. People are living only in parts, and to live in parts is to live in misery. A buddha is one who lives as a whole, as an organic whole.