Zen-ish Thoughts About The Horse Coyote Parable

There is a well-known Buddhist parable told in various forms and given different titles. In essence, it goes like this.

The Horse Parable

A farmer's stallion ran away. His neighbor came by to console him. "Such bad luck!" said the neighbor. The farmer replied, "Who knows what is good and what is bad?"

The next day, the stallion returned of its own accord, joined by three wild mares! "Such good luck!" said the neighbor. The farmer replied, "Who knows what is good and what is bad?"

The following day, the farmer's son tried to tame one of the mares. He was thrown off, and broke his leg. "Such bad luck!" said the neighbor. The farmer replied, "Who knows what is good and what is bad?"

The following day, the army was conscripting young men to fight, and likely die, in a war. As this young man's leg was broken, they left him at home with his family. Hearing of this, the neighbor awoke to what the farmer had been telling him. He thought to himself, "Who knows what is good and what is bad?"

The Coyote Parable

I was taking my dog on his morning walk. We both suddenly heard some very loud noise. It sounded like Rap music being played way too loudly, right next to us, even though I found that the young man carrying the small boom box was a block away from us, so it was loud. Nearly every line in the lyric had a word starting with N, F, or both. It was 7 A.M. as boom bax man walked past sleepy home after sleepy home, playing so loudly that we could here the both the intended sound and the speaker distortion from a block away.

I was annoyed by the sonic assault, but even more so by the man's complete disregard for his impact on others, which would have been bad enough at that volume at midday, but so much more so in the early morning. On top of that, my dog is a rescue with a tough past that has made him what is called a reactive dog, and he was beginning to react to this auditory intrusion as a threat. I needed to manage this before my dog, Woody, went over his threshold. So, like the farmer's neighbor, I reckoned the boom box man's disregard for others as a bad thing, and us being sort of trapped by him to be bad luck.

I was in the middle of a block, so I could walk toward the sound, which would have been really trying for Woody, or in the same direction as boom box man, hoping to stay ahead of him until I could take a turn at the next corner. The latter seemed the better choice, so I resumed traveling in my original direction, with boom box man closing in on us.

As soon as I made the decision, I saw a coyote moving in the same direction too, at a fair trot, about a half a block ahead of us. He repeatedly turned to look at boom box man. I had a moment's recollection of the Horse Parable and thought, who knows what is good and what is bad – boom box man had spared us from an interaction with a coyote!

Woody also saw the coyote, and especially as boom box man had already put him on edge, he began barking very loudly. To my surprise, Woody suddenly seemed to let go of both of them and began sniffing a bush. Such good luck, I thought.

As he began to sniff more intently and push through the bushes into the yard, pulling against the leash, I continued to think this was good luck as he was so focused on this that the coyote would be far away from us, and boom box man would pass us. No. Woody came back through the bushes more amped up than ever, barking madly in the direction he last saw the coyote, despite it now being out of sight and far away. I surmised that he had been sniffing where the coyote had been resting before boom box man scared him off. Now fully informed about the coyote, Woody was having none of it. He began non-stop barking in with his impressively full voice, competing with boom box man's volume. What bad luck, I thought.

I got to the corner and turned left. Woody followed my lead without resistance but his barking was unabated, and he kept turn his head to look where he had last seen the coyote. I hoped that boom box man, who was now just barely behind us, would not also turn left. I wondered if we would soon run into the coyote face to face as he would be forced by the street he was on to also turn left and circle back in our direction, and now had an effective head start.

Reactive Woody went on barking very loudly for the next block and a half. There was nothing I could do to soothe him. Even though we kept moving at a good pace, his bark was so loud and frequent that I felt bad for disturbing people in the houses we were passing. We ourselves had become the next iteration of the boom box man, annoying sleepy people at 7 A.M. What ironic bad luck, I thought.

Woody finally stopped barking, but his pace and agitation remained high for the next block or so. Finally he could accept my efforts to clam him down. What good luck, I thought, to finally be passed all of that.

Several blocks later, we were coming up on someone walking another dog. Because of Woody's reactivity, this is something we try to avoid. I shifted to walk on the other side of the street, to put some space between us. Woody seemed okay. The other dog seemed okay.

Then just as we were about to pass without incident, the other dog started barking aggressively at Woody. What bad luck, I thought. Woody could not resist barking back and pulling at the leash.

But unlike boom bax man and coyotes, this was a scenario Woody and I had been working on for a long time. I was able to easily get his attention, help him regain his calm, and complete the rest of our walk, notwithstanding that I cut it a little short to avoid any chance of ren-encountering the coyote.

When we got home, Woody asked for a lot of comforting interactions, which I gladly gave him. Once he was calm enough to hear it, I gave him the following counsel. Each moment of good and bad in life is just a snapshot in time, not the whole movie. We should do our best to enjoy the good times without imagining they are somehow due us. We should do our best to forebear the bad times, knowing they are not due us either, and will not go on forever unchanged, either in themselves, or in how we respond to them. I don't think he quite internalized this message, but it was good for me to repeat it for me.

In the scheme of things, these good and bad moments were trivia. Boom bax man did not wake up with the goal of disturbing dozens of people, just with careless disregard, and perhaps a sense of over self-importance. The Coyote was just sleeping, coping with long-standing urban encroachment. Woody was not trying to be reactive. In fact, it is amazing how much progress he has made in the time he has been with us.

These annoyances that can feel like suffering in the moment are nothing like my mother's recent death, or the several substantial struggles that I, my friends and family, and everyone on the planet face as life goes on. There is suffering, and there is "suffering". Life provides enough true suffering that we don't need to add to it by imagining that mere annoyance is also suffering. Have a good day. Go out of your way to ensure you see it as such, even if a rude man and a coyote cross your path.