It’s what you say it is.
A farmer had only one horse, and one day the horse ran away. The neighbors came to condole over his terrible loss. The farmer said, “What makes you think it is so terrible?”A month later, the horse came home–this time bringing with her two beautiful wild horses. The neighbors became excited at the farmer’s good fortune. Such lovely strong horses! The farmer said, “What makes you think this is good fortune?”The farmer’s son was thrown from one of the wild horses and broke his leg. All the neighbors were very distressed. Such bad luck! The farmer said, “What makes you think it is bad?”
A war came, and every able-bodied man was conscripted and sent into battle. Only the farmer’s son, because he had a broken leg, remained. The neighbors congratulated the farmer. “What makes you think this is good?” said the farmer.
This Taoist story contains a great big fat key to happy and healthy living:
Things that happen to us are neither good nor bad, they are just things that happen.
When we quit labeling events as “good” or “bad”, we free ourselves to decide HOW we wish experience them.
For me, this is quite simply life-changing.
September 13, 2007 at 10:17 pm
A beautiful story. A million tons of thanks. Life is like that.
September 14, 2007 at 3:25 am
That’s a very profound key to happiness indeed. A friend once told me the same thing. Sadly I forgot about it - thanks for the reminder Jon
“Everything is just IS. Nothing has any meaning except the meaning you attach to it.”
September 14, 2007 at 4:34 am
Excellent post, thank you.
“The water running in the river does not get mad at the stone that sits in it’s way. The water simply goes around it and says, “Now this is my way.’”
September 14, 2007 at 7:22 am
I’m missing the key to happy and healthy. I don’t get it.
I mean I get that they are things that simply happen but when does the Taoist celebrate? When does he mourn?
September 14, 2007 at 9:24 am
I’ve recently mentioned this on some blog or other already recently. If it was this one, then please forgive me for repeating myself! But it’s the idea that ‘the fall’, the knowledge of good and evil, was not about sex at all but about exactly this: judging things. For if you start labeling things as ‘good’ or ‘evil’, then some of the things around you are necessarily going to be ‘bad’. So goodbye garden of Eden. Goodbye perfection. By definition, you can’t be in paradise any longer if you’re surrounded by all that ‘bad’ stuff!
Which perhaps provides some kind of answer to worshipcity? For if you can learn to accept everything, you are constantly in paradise. You celebrate constantly. You rejoice constantly. You ‘pray without ceasing’ - prayer being not about asking for stuff but giving thanks for the perfection in which you live. Of course there will be emotions, ‘good’ and ‘bad’, which surface from time to time, but these will be like clouds passing over the sun, coming and going amidst the underlying perfection.
Good, eh? And the really good news, I believe, is that we now have the tools to achieve this, even in the midst of the apparent chaos in which we live…
September 14, 2007 at 10:42 am
I’m sorry, I missed the logical jump between “the farmer is apathetic” and “the farmer is happy”. He seemed devoid of any emotion, so I can’t see his model as a “key to happiness”.
Philosophizing about this “freeing enlightened” way is one thing, but faced with truly bad things, how many would believe it? If a man breaks into your home and is torturing and killing your family, would you just watch? You could be “happy” knowing that he is not doing “bad” things, he is just doing things.
September 14, 2007 at 11:54 am
???? I HAVE experienced some bad things in my life including having one of my children die in from of me and I’m here to tell you that, yes, there can be joy even in the midst of overwhelming sorrow.
And your model of a man torturing your family while you standby and allow it is NOT representative of this concept. It’s not an excuse for inaction. Far from it - it requires CONSTANT action, the ‘prayer without ceasing’ that Secret Simon mentions.
September 14, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Hi everyone,
Thanks for your comments. I do not take this idea to mean that nothing is good or bad and so I turn into an emotionless zombie. I take it to be a means of escaping the idea that “Oh, life is so bad, look at all the bad things that happen to me all the time … oh, I’m so unlucky, I was born unlucky, the universe is against me, blah blah” All I think this is about is that WE decide our response to the events of life that happen. For instance, if I ask you “Are you having a good day or a bad day?” Your answer is entirely dependent on how you have chosen to percieve the events of the day. But this in no way precludes or shuts down our emotions. If I saw someone hitting one of my children I would be very very angry indeed and watch out whoever is doing the hitting!!! That act of my child being hit would become “bad” because that is the meaning I choose to give to that event, not because the event in itself is intrinisically bad.
I am still working through this, but that’s my take thus far. I have to say again, that grasping this is proving a life-changing thing for me because I am suddenly free to declare what is “good” and “bad” in my life, and so I’m choosing a whole lot more “good” than “bad” and winding up a lot happier for it!
Jon
September 14, 2007 at 2:44 pm
This post is just plain weird
September 14, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Truly meaningful.
A simple story told with a lot of sense (:
September 15, 2007 at 4:16 am
Pretending like the person hitting your child is not intrinsically bad is a step that I could not begin to take. Certainly how we react to things is predominantly under our control, but pretending there is nothing that is truly good or evil doesn’t fly with me. Good luck in your search.
September 15, 2007 at 11:12 am
I understand your skepticism, びっくり, but you have to walk before you can run with this. The guy attacking your child is an extreme example, but there are lots of things that we label ‘bad’ in life which have much less claim to the label. Like people pushing into the queue in front of you at the supermarket, for instance. A lot of us go through our lives getting very upset about little things like that and causing ourselves a lot of unnecessary pain.
But it’s certainly not about *pretending* they’re not upsetting us. It’s a question of looking at why we’re reacting the way we are and realizing, perhaps, that we’re only doing it out of habit. That, perhaps, we’re not really in a hurry after all, so it doesn’t *matter* if the guy pushes in. If we do this, we can get like Jon and go round labeling less things as “bad” and therefore getting less upset about life.
But it is possible, through spiritual practices such as meditation to go beyond this and learn to ‘accept’ whatever may happen. We may still wish to change the situation, as you would if your child was attacked, and we may well take action to make that change, but it is possible, nevertheless, to accept that *in this moment*, this is what is happening. This might seem weird but if you really think about it, this acceptance is the only approach that makes sense. Not to accept what is happening at the present time is arguing with reality, and that’s not an argument that anyone’s going to win.
September 15, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Hi Simon,
A this stage I’m only taking this idea (for myself) as far as acknowledging that I decide what events mean, how I wish to label them, and then I decide my reaction. That’s a big enough step for now! I’m wary of the Buddist ideas of taking this further to the point of not feeling anything at all. This idea seems really wrong to me, as we are emotional beings and God made us that way!
Jon
September 16, 2007 at 2:30 am
Good arguments and discussion there over a good old poor story or fable. Hundred people interpret the same story in hundred different way. That’s what our opinion or perception is.
Truth can never be told, the truth is perverted the moment the truth is told. Our finite words and small stories or fables can only try to point out some dimension of truth or life. Our life and truth are multidimensional and infinite. Let us not ‘eat or swaloow words’ in it’s literal sense. Let’s catch rather the meta or lateral meaning too. After all all the truth expressed are just ‘relative truth’ - they may be true in acontext. So all our truths in a sense are contextual truth. Nothing is absolute truth. “May be so” is more appropriate. Just we need to take the hints and hits to imbibe the truth. These kind of fables just give a small “trigger” in us towards understanding something in a spur of moment, in a jerk of our mind. We need not read too much into it. There is no end in arguing and winningover either side.
September 16, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Sulo,
I take your point and I agree with you. For me, it is not about finding “the truth”, as this attitude causes all the sorts of problems that fill our history books. I think that we do not have direct access to the reality of God, and as such we must work with imperfect models that help describe an explain aspects of that reality in pictures and words that we can understand. It has been said that “all models are wrong, some models are useful”. This story of the farmer is a simple model that helps understand an aspect of God and Man. Good model - let’s use it. If a better model comes along, then throw this one out and use another.
Jon
September 17, 2007 at 2:19 pm
{{hugs}}
I’m kinda’ behind…I’ve been away from computer access. How about we use this approach to your imaginary situation?
How about we don’t try to deny that the act of an adult hitting a child is a respulsive act? How about we don’t try to deny that the act of an adult hitting a child is an UNloving act?
Of course, the first thing we’re going to do, quite naturally, due to compassion, is stop the act. Address the cause of the pain.
It’s in our attitude and how this attitude dictates our next responses, that is the key. For in seeing the adult as ‘bad’, and seeing the ‘villainy’ in the adult, we entirely miss addressing the pain OF the adult, which is the root cause for self expression so unloving and repuslive.
Behaviour and self expression are learned responses.
What the label of ‘negative’ Is, is a statement of repeling Love. We slap the label on, thus giving us reason for our limitations when it comes to Love’s extension. We draw a ‘ring past not’.
Where Compassion is extended, not.
Where Understanding is sought, not.
Where Acceptance is extended, not.
Where Tolerance is extended, not.
Where Mercy is extended, not.
Raised Catholic, I was never taught to read the Bible, that came later in my life. I don’t know chapter and verse but I do know that somewheres in there is something about ‘God hating sin but not the sinner’.
Since when does what we do, define us?
Is that why the garbage man doesn’t receive the same Respect as an Admiral?
September 24, 2007 at 12:16 am
[...] got into an interesting discussion about acceptance over at Jon’s Post-Christian Journey. A reader made the (perfectly [...]
September 25, 2007 at 1:04 am
Acceptance is a wonderful tool but should not be applied carte blanche to every situation. Just as there is a thin line between genius and madness, north and south poles, love and hate, etc, so acceptance can be an excuse (or confused with) not taking action, repressing, not rocking the boat, conforming, not facing up to a situation, not helping oneself or another, allowing unacceptable behaviour in another. Some people simply do not recongise acceptance in others and continue their appalling behaviour and when you think about it we do not do people any favours and indeed may stop them learning when they do not see the results of their hamful behaviour.
Everything in life is a double edged sword and each situation needs a different approach. A screwdriver is an indispensible tool but we would not use it for every job in the house. If we apply one approach to every situation it becomes dogma.
There is nothing wrong in certain circumstances with saying enough is enough and what’s wrong with saying ‘excuse me I am next in the queue’?
May 28, 2008 at 11:48 am
Excellent rendition of a classic!
This type of thinking is very non-conventional to us westerners to say the least. However, as another verse from the Tao Te Ching says: “If everyone knew it, it would not be wisdom!”
Everything is perspective. If you label something as good, it is. Label the same event as bad, and it is. Events and situations are only good or bad because we say they are. It’s called “labeling” and is a source of some of the greatest suffering in the world.
At it’s deepest level, labeling is simply a result of an erroneous belief in a non-exsistant “I”, as opposed to “you”, or anyone else not “I”. From there the error progresses to: “me and mine” “you and yours”. Once the error begins to propagate, we file off into seperate camps and begin to war with each other, creating incomprehensible atrocities such as the genocide in Darfur, or the situation in Iraq.
(yes, “atrocity” is a label)
Thanks Jon for publishing this story!
May 28, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Morambler,
This idea is indeed very non-conventional, but over the past months I have moved from toying with it as an idea to embracing it as a way of thinking and living and I have to say that my life is far better for it (becuase I say it is - sic) I have found it to be very empowering to reclaim the power of deciding what befalls me to be good or bad, and means I am no longer a victim of fate or the whims of others. Things are in general a lot better for me simply because I have decided to label more things as better.
Ya just gotta’ luv it.
Thnaks for swinging by!
Jon