Stoa and Tao

I have encountered a number of variants of this Taoist story, but I believe I first read it in Huston Smith's The World's Religions. It remains welcome to me both as a teaching tool and as an aid for my own personal reflection:


"In the Taoist perspective even good and evil are not head-on
opposites. The West has tended to dichotomize the two, but Taoists
are less categorical. They buttress their reserve with the story of a
farmer whose horse ran away. His neighbor commiserated, only to
be told, 'Who knows what’s good or bad?' It was true, for the next
day the horse returned, bringing with it a drove of wild horses it had
befriended. The neighbor reappeared, this time with congratulations
for the windfall. He received the same response: 'Who knows what is
good or bad?' Again this proved true, for the next day the farmer’s son
tried to mount one of the wild horses and fell, breaking his leg. More
commiserations from the neighbor, which elicited the question: 'Who
knows what is good or bad?' And for a fourth time the farmer’s point
prevailed, for the following day soldiers came by commandeering for
the army, and the son was exempted because of his injury. If this all
sounds very much like Zen, it should; for Buddhism processed through
Taoism became Zen"

 --from Huston Smith, The World's Religions, Chapter 5

I enjoy this on a number of levels.

First because Taoism and Stoicism walk hand in hand here, joined by the recognition that good and evil are not always what we may think they are.

Second, because just as Smith points out that good and evil need not be seen as polar opposites, so too it is a mistake to assume a false dichotomy between the philosophies of the East and the West. For all the different culture and context, wisdom remains wisdom.

Third, because the reader may understand the lesson, but then may still struggle to apply the lesson, showing us all the more how deeply we must dig to get to roots of our happiness or misery.

Almost every time I have discussed this tale with others, they respond by saying that everything ended up good for the farmer and his son. But is that not still being stuck in circumstantial ideas about good and bad? The 'happy ending' is hardly the point I think, and looking at it in that way may even conceal the meaning.  No circumstance is ever entirely good or bad in itself, but depends upon whether our estimation and our action flow with or against Nature.

I have often suggested the following exercise: continue the narrative, and consider how the story could branch out into further instances and views of good and bad. I've heard some creative responses, but I'm often told that the exercise is impossible.

One could continue on and on forever and ever, I've heard it said, and eventually try to gaze at the balance of the whole Universe from this single instance, seeing now that anything and everything shares in good and bad in subtle and often mysterious ways. It can't end in the usual way at all, because the Tao, or Providence, or whatever we wish to name it, isn't simply about throwing everything into neat piles of good and bad fortune. It's about how we choose to work with fortune, of any and every sort.

Exactly.

Written on 5/19/2006