Tired riders

A disciple came to the Master. He had gone to see a polo game. The Master asked him, “Tell me a few things. Were the riders on the horses tired?”

The disciple said, “Yes, at the end of the game they looked tired.”

Secondly the Master said, “Were the horses tired?”

The disciple said, “Yes, a little bit, not as much as the riders, but even the horses were tired.”

Then the Master said, “The last and the final question: were the posts, the wooden posts which are needed in the game, were they tired too?”

Now this was too much! The disciple hesitated a little.

The Master said, “Go into your room and meditate over it. Tomorrow morning you can answer.”

The whole night he could not sleep; he tossed and turned. The wooden posts – how can they be tired? What a stupid question to ask! But when the Master asks, it can’t be stupid; there must be something in it. The whole night he tried hard.

Early in the morning as the sun was rising he rushed to the Master, fell at his feet, and he said, “Yes, Master, they were tired.”

The Master said, “I am happy. Your going to the polo game has not been useless.” Others who were present, they could not understand what was going on. Wooden posts tired?!

Somebody asked the Master, “What nonsense is this? How can wooden posts be tired?”

And the Master said, “If wooden posts cannot be tired then nobody can be tired, because this whole existence is one.”

If man gets tired, if horses get tired, then wooden posts also get tired. The whole existence is a manifestation of one energy.

Osho, Be Still and Know, Ch 10, Q 5

Series compiled by Shanti
All excerpts of this series can be found in: 1001 Tales
Featured image: A Persian miniature from the poem Guy-o Chawgân (“the Ball and the Polo-mallet”) during the Safavid dynasty of Persia, showing courtiers on horseback playing polo, 1546 CE (wikipedia.org)