Inspirational Mug - The Horse

The Parable of the Horse. An old Chinese farmer lost his best stallion one day. And his neighbor came around to express his regrets. But the farmer just said, ‘Who knows what is good and what is bad?’ The next day, the stallion returned bringing with him three wild mares. The neighbor rushed back to celebrate with the farmer. But the old farmer simply said, ‘Who knows what is good and what is bad?’ The following day the farmer’s son fell from one of the wild mares while trying to break her in. The next day the army came to the farm to conscript the farmer’s son for the war. But they found him injured and left him with his father. The neighbor thought to himself, ‘Who knows what is good and what is bad?’ We have two ways of viewing the world. One allows us to have a very open mind and accept things as they happen and work with them as they happen. The other scenario here is that the moment things happen we give them meaning. We assign meaning to things and the moment we do that and decide what is good or what is bad, then we start to experience suffering around these events because as we deal with them we have to make them fit into the understanding of whether or not it’s a good thing or it’s a bad thing.