Master Shunryū Suzuki founded the first Zen Buddhist monastery outside of Asia. Fed up with the superficiality with which his fellow immigrant teachers brought Zen to the people of California, he opened the remote Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in the Los Padres National Forest. There, after they had traveled 14 miles on a narrow, steep dirt road, Suzuki made his guests sit in silent zazen meditation for 40 minutes at a time.
In his 1970 book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Suzuki quotes an idea from zen scripture:
“There are four kinds of horses: excellent ones, good ones, poor ones, and bad ones. The best horse will run slow and fast, right and left, at the driver’s will, before it sees the shadow of the whip; the second best will run as well as the first one does, just before the whip reaches its skin; the third one will run when it feels pain on its body; the fourth will run after the pain penetrates to the marrow of its bones.”
“You can imagine how difficult it is for the fourth one to learn how to run!” Suzuki continues. He says that, naturally, we’d all like to be the best horse, and if we can’t, then only second best will do. “But those who find great difficulties in practicing Zen will find more meaning in it,” Suzuki explains.
“If you study calligraphy you will find that those who are not so clever usually become the best calligraphers. Those who are very clever with their hands often encounter great difficulty after they have reached a certain stage.” The same is true in art, Zen, and all of life, Suzuki goes on. We can’t say that someone is bad at something just because they struggle with it. Similarly, we can’t know for sure someone is good only because they have a certain talent for a particular activity.
Not everyone can sit cross-legged on the cold, hard floor for extended periods of time. During Suzuki’s zazen sessions, he watched many people improvise. They brought pillows, used blankets, or changed their position to alleviate some of the pain. But with pain comes awareness, and so Suzuki believed that “actually it is easier for those who have difficulties in sitting to arouse the true way-seeking mind than for those who can sit easily.” The fact that they needed the full force of the whip — the pain penetrating to the marrow of their bones — helped them not just learn but truly internalize their lessons.
“Sometimes,” Suzuki writes, “the best horse may be the worst horse, and the worst horse can be the best one.” Don’t try to be the best horse. Keep learning. Practicing. Enduring. Until, one day, “you will realize the marrow of Zen and acquire its true strength.”