Tending Horses in the 21st Century

This post is adapted from one I wrote some years ago entitled Tending Horses as the World Warms. I wrote that one in response to the continued denial of climate change by so many in the United States, denial that keeps us from taking action to mitigate impending disaster even as massive climate change-related events threaten lives and property all over the world like never before. Since then we’ve witnessed widespread recalcitrant denial in the face of a deadly pandemic, denial that's made our nation’s suffering and death even worse. It seems that, to our detriment, we just can’t seem to agree on some very fundamental aspects of the reality in which we live. We become attached to the stories we tell ourselves about the way the world is, and we have a difficult time letting them go. Until we’re forced to, that is.  

Why do we have this tendency to stay lost in our stories even when they no longer fit the reality in which we live? Is it because we have so much psychic energy invested in the creation of our grand cities built from brick-pallets full of ideas and concepts mortared together with belief, speculation, and supposition? Is it because our sense of self is more dependent on the stories we tell ourselves than reality itself?

 

Four Wyoming horses

Questions such as these are likely the reason that Zen Buddhist practice resonates with me so. It replaces belief with a very deep and profound realization of the reality that is right before our eyes: that we suffer for our failure to understand that no “thing” enjoys a permanent and independent existence. In fact, contrary to all of the hype and romanticism, a deep understanding of this truth (sometimes called the three marks of existence) is all that enlightenment is – a profound realization of the interdependence, the impermanence, and the emptiness of all phenomena.

We don’t all share the same capacity for realizing this truth. Some grasp it in quick fashion. Others have to be taught the same lesson over and over again before accepting it. In Shime, a fascicle of the Shobogenzo written in 1255, Dogen Zenji relates the following teaching:

The Buddha once told his monks that there were four kinds of horses. The first, upon seeing the shadow of the riding crop, is startled and forthwith follows the wish of its rider. The second, startled when the crop touches its hair, forthwith follows the wish of its rider. The third is startled after the crop touches its flesh. The fourth is awakened only after the touch of the riding crop is felt in its bones. (Nearman 2007, p. 1045)

 

Forget what you might be thinking about animal abuse, or the appropriateness of fear as motivation. The Buddha is talking about us waking up to reality, whether our awakening comes via listening to his teachings related to birth, old age, sickness, and death, or whether our awakening comes at the hands of life itself, riding us hard and putting us away wet (and old, and sick, and dead). Dogen continues:

The first horse is like a man who realizes impermanence when he learns of a death in a neighboring village. The second horse is like a man who realizes this when death occurs in his own village. The third is like a man who does not awaken this mind [the mind that realizes impermanence] until death occurs among his own family, and the forth horse is like a man who awakens this mind only when his own death is imminent. (Nishiyama, 1975; Vol. 3, p. 113)

Is there any better evidence than this precipitously catastrophic pandemic and the ongoing, slower moving climate crisis that we suffer for our failure to understand that no “thing” enjoys a permanent and independent existence? How can we even begin to think that we are independent of the environment, each other, and all things? Sure, we can keep believing stories that tell us something to the contrary, but that will not change reality or make it go away.

  

The question for Buddhist and non-Buddhist alike, then, is what kind of horse will we be? Perhaps we’ve already missed our chance to be that first kind of horse, the one that merely has to see the shadow of the riding crop in order to understand what must be done. We might have also missed our chance to be one of the second type as well. So, will it really take each and every one of us experiencing some catastrophe impacting our families or ourselves before we become enlightened to the consequences of our actions, before we wake up and begin asking ourselves what we’re going to do about it?

 

References

Nearman, H. (2007). Shobogenzo: the treasure house of the eye of the true teaching (H. Nearman, Trans.) Published by Shasta Abbey Press. (Shime was compiled and transcribed from Dogen’s original manuscript by Ejo in 1255.) http://www.shastaabbey.org/pdf/shobo/090shime.pdf

Nishiyama, K. (1975). Shobogenzo: the eye and treasury of the true law, Vol. III. (K. Nishiyama, Trans.) Published by Nakayama Shobo Buddhist Book Store. (Shime was compiled and transcribed from Dogen’s original manuscript by Ejo in 1255.)

 

Image Credits

Wyoming horses photographed by the author 

 

Copyright 2013, 2021 by Mark Robert Frank