Osho – Sat-Chit-Anand – truth, consciousness, bliss. All are possible to you. In fact, they are your birthright. You just have to claim them … and the claim needs a little patience.
There is a Sufi story: A king stopped his horse. He was passing by a nursery that belonged to a poor gardener. And he looked at the poor gardener – he had stopped for a special reason. He had wanted to stop many times. He used to pass through that beautiful place where the nursery of the poor gardener was – it was the most beautiful way to the palace.
Today he could not contain his curiosity. The curiosity was that the man looked so old … certainly he had passed at least one century. Perhaps he was one hundred and twenty or even more. He looked so old and yet he was preparing small plants and working the whole day on those plants. And those were plants of trees which take at least one hundred years to grow to their full height.
Their lifespan is long – they live at least four thousand years. After one hundred years, they are still just children. They can count on a lifespan of four thousand years, but only after one hundred years do they start flowering – not before that. And after one thousand years, they start giving fruit.
The king was puzzled: this man seemed at least one hundred and twenty years old. ”Is he mad, or what? He cannot expect to see the flowers of these trees, to say nothing about the fruits. And he is working so hard in his old age, the whole day in the hot sun” – it was a desert land.
He stopped and went close to the old man and said, ”I watch you every day, and I see how hard you work, but a question … Every day I go on repressing it, not wanting to interfere. But you will have to forgive me – I want to ask one thing: Do you think you will be able to see the flowers of these plants?”
The old man laughed. He said, ”No, I will not be able to see the flowers of these plants. But do you see just behind my hut those huge trees, thousands of years old? They are the same trees. They are giving me fruits, they are giving me flowers.”
The king said, ”I can see them, but I still don’t understand. What do you mean by bringing those trees in?”
The man said, ”If my parents or my forefathers had also thought that they would not be able to see the flowers, to say nothing about the fruits, there would not have been those trees. I am not thinking about myself. I am thinking about my forefathers and about my future children. I owe them something.
”If my forefathers were so patient that they could be happy that some children whom they could never know would enjoy the fruits and the flowers of these beautiful trees … Do you think I am a worse human being than my forefathers? Can’t I think also of someone, far away in the future, being thankful towards me?”
The king wrote in his biography: ”The old gardener has shocked me with his patience and with his infinite love and compassion and trust.” Somebody, some day, is bound to see the flowers.
Source – Osho Book “Sat Chit Anand”