The Horse Talks Back!

Suddenly, the road behind me and the road before me has become life itself and I have turned into a horse. I am a beast living at the mercy of your whip, which dictates upon me which way I should go up and down the cliff, left or right, without much choice because I am a beast. You thought you’re free to put all your lousy burdens upon my back, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for you to do. You don’t even stop to think of how much you’ve been depriving me of my nature, when you profit from all my work.
You want to tame the beast in me when my bestiality has always been the best thing in me. All I want is to run wild in the fields, feel the breeze upon my mane, and give back to nature what nature has given me but your whip and your reins are now preventing me. Don’t talk to me about being grateful to High Heavens for creating my beautiful mane when I don’t even own my own body. My whole body is for sale and you’ve been selling me so many times ever since I became a horse. You’ve been selling my labor up and down the cliff to people who can’t even scale a simple cliff with their own feet. For they got money, of course.
My market value, you measure, by how fast I can go over that cliff and back again, by how much load I can carry, by how many other young horses I can bring to the world, by how soon my hooves can bring a lazy man to his home, by how much my little body can take all the burdens and toil and abuses imaginable. All for a piece of paper that I can’t even chew and swallow! Sometimes, just to make more money, you even come up with such an outrageous concept as improving my pedigree!
Sometimes, of course, you loosen your hold of the reins just enough to let me go up this difficult cliff unhampered. But most of the time, I can’t even take a rest in this beautiful landscape to grab something to eat. There are times when I look at my hooves and think how powerful they are compared to your delicate frame. Why did I ever allow you to push and order me around? You, who can’t even give one decent kick to kill a beast, what quirk of fate had put you where you are now to lord me over? And how stupid can I get to allow you to?

Lessons from the Bagobo Horseman

PART THREE

How did a horse get a full grasp of the mathematical formula of gravitation? Or, was it born with an innate understanding of the principles of levity? Yet, as it moves its rider to higher grounds, the horse musters all its strength and speed as if the universal mind has stamped upon its body the intelligence to understand and defy gravity. There’s only the rider and the horse on the way up the cliff. No other world exists; not even the landscape, which at that height, can be so fatally captivating! But a moment’s inattention can prove too dangerous. The rider has to time all her movements with the horse, has to become one with the horse in mind and body. She has to let go of all controls and trust everything to the horse, which at that moment becomes an embodiment of wisdom; allowing her a glimpse of the eternal mystery of life and death in a flash of a second.