Steadying the Ship

There is a long honored Zen story about a man riding a speeding horse. As horse and rider gallop dangerous close to a small group of travelers along the same road, a man nearly trampled calls out to the rider, “Where are you going in such a hurry?” The man on horseback desperately answers over his shoulder, “I don’t know! You will have to ask the horse!”  

The state of affairs for that rider is exactly as it is for most of us. While in the saddle, we have no command over our direction or destination. “We are riding horses we cannot control,” Buddhist teacher Thích Nhất Hanh observed about this story.

But the truth of the matter is, there is little control to be had – over horses – over anything. It is a false notion to think that we can exert our will over our circumstances. Oh…