The Power of the Herd (31 page)

[Siddhartha] watched a buffalo straining
to pull a heavy plow, followed by a robust farmer whose skin was bronzed from long work in the sun. The farmer's left hand steadied the plow while his right hand wielded a whip to urge the buffalo on. Sun blazed and the man's sweat poured in streams from his body. The rich earth was divided into two neat furrows. As the plow turned the earth, Siddhartha noticed that the bodies of worms and other small creatures were being cut as well. As the worms writhed upon the ground, they were spotted by birds who flew down and grabbed them in their beaks. Then Siddhartha saw a large bird swoop down and grasp a small bird in its talons….

When the king and queen passed by sometime later, they discovered Siddhartha still sitting in deep concentration. Gotami [his stepmother] was moved to tears seeing how beautiful Siddhartha looked, like a small, still statue. But King Suddhodana was seized with a sudden apprehension. If Siddhartha could sit so solemnly at such a young age, might not the holy man Asita's prophecy come true? Too disturbed to remain at the picnic, the king returned alone to the palace in his royal carriage.

Some poor, country children passed by the tree speaking and laughing happily. Gotami motioned them to be quiet. She pointed to Siddhartha sitting beneath the rose-apple tree. Curious, the children stared at him. Suddenly, Siddhartha opened his eyes. Seeing the queen, he smiled.

“Mother,” he said, “reciting the scriptures does nothing to help the worms and the birds.”

Siddhartha…then noticed the children observing him. They were about his own age, but their clothes were tattered, their faces soiled, and their arms and legs piteously thin. Aware of his princely attire, Siddhartha felt embarrassed, and yet he wanted very much to play with them….He asked Gotami for permission to invite the children to the picnic feast. At first she hesitated, but then she nodded in assent.

This incident marked a turning point in Siddhartha's young life, demonstrating not only his sensitivity to the suffering of others but his growing awareness of the impotency of most religious and social structures to address this issue. Siddhartha's perceptive, compassionate nature was unsettling to his father, who wielded power to insulate himself and his extended family from life's uncomfortable realities. This, as the Buddha would later observe, was ignorance in action, and it had nothing to do with low IQ. Rather, it was a
misuse
of intelligence for people to
ignore
what didn't fit into their limited self-serving views of life. Ignorance was both a by-product of and a necessary ingredient in
the increasing human obsession with creating ever more elaborate cocoons that supported the lavish comfort of the few at the expense of the many.

Siddhartha's father was the king of this strategy. From the festival day forward, Suddhodana insisted that his son be educated and entertained within the carefully controlled setting of the palace grounds. There Siddhartha enjoyed every possible socially sanctioned pleasure, continuing to develop exceptional archery, music making, and riding skills enhanced by his patient, empathetic nature. Luckily for posterity, Suddhodana didn't realize that the equestrian arts, which most royals employed for pageantry and war, were also capable of exercising an expansive, nonpredatory power, one that would transform Siddhartha's sensitivity into mindfulness, courage, and poise in the midst of chaos, giving him the tools he would need to leave his comfortable life and attempt the impossible.

In one classic coming-of-age story, Siddhartha tamed a wild stallion to win the hand of Yasodhara, daughter of a neighboring king. This oft-cited anecdote is remarkably similar to the Alexander-Bucephalus tale, in that the horse was incredibly defiant and extremely dangerous.

Details vary, but in many accounts, Siddhartha was competing with other young noblemen to impress the beautiful princess and, perhaps more important, her powerful, exacting father. One by one, suitors tried to mount the horse as terrified grooms restrained the enraged animal with ropes. In some versions, an initially successful rider was thrown and nearly trampled to death before guards pulled him to safety in the nick of time. Still, Siddhartha showed no fear. Like Alexander, the Indian prince took a more thoughtful, compassionate approach, calmly walking to the agitated animal, speaking softly, and eventually stroking his face and sides. When the stallion began to lick Siddhartha's hand, a tentative sign of trust and submission, the young man quietly eased onto the animal's back, winning the contest. Yasodhara became a royal horse whisperer's wife, mother of his son, and much later, one of her husband's spiritual followers, joining the first order of Buddhist nuns.

Like many authors who've written about Siddhartha over the past twenty-five hundred years, Deepak Chopra included a horse-gentling episode in his novel
Buddha:
A
Story of Enlightenment,
artfully combining the sketchy facts about the prince's favorite horse, Kanthaka, with reports of the young man's ability to tame a wild stallion to win Yasodhara's hand in marriage. This anecdote,
however, takes place when Siddhartha is a bit younger, and much more interested in horses than in girls:

When he got to the stables he found Channa
holding the reins of his favorite white stallion. The horse had come to the king from the wilds, and at first nobody could tame him. But Siddhartha spotted the animal's fear and used it. Every time he brought a stick of sugar cane for the stallion, he would sit and wait as long as it took for the horse to walk over to him. He never approached on his own, even if it took an hour for the animal to calm down.

When he was tempted enough, the horse wanted to snatch the treat and run off, but Siddhartha made sure that his hand always touched the horse before he released the food. Gradually the white stallion began to accept being touched as part of being rewarded, until the day came when Siddhartha approached him in public and put a bridle on him, a feat nobody else had accomplished. From that point on it was only a matter of time before word went about that the prince had tamed an untamable wild stallion. On the day when the horse allowed himself to be mounted, Siddhartha named him Kanthaka.

Buddhist histories specify that it was Kanthaka who, years later, carried his master away from the palace under cover of darkness, through the countryside and across the Anoma River, where Siddhartha embarked on the ultimate journey of freedom — from suffering, craving, hate, and delusion. Some ancient texts insist Kanthaka died of grief when Siddhartha struck out on his own that night. But the horse was subsequently reincarnated as a Brahman (a member of India's priestly caste) who, after attending talks by a then much older Buddha, easily took the teachings to heart, eventually becoming enlightened himself.

It's not necessary to believe in reincarnation to glean useful insights from this tale, if we look at the more fantastic elements as
fingers pointing to the moon.
In this respect, I must return to the strange story of “taming” my own black stallion Midnight Merlin. To tell it honestly, I share, at times, pivotal experiences I can't back up with scientific research, at least not yet. But in subsequent chapters I'll offer some working theories on these principles that help leaders lead, trauma survivors heal, and visionaries in training navigate the unknown.

Innovators must walk a razor's edge, entering the great unmapped territory of human experience without getting lost or going crazy. Here skepticism becomes a healthy tool — if it isn't used to disregard feelings and forces that defy
the current worldview. It's important to remember that, from a limited sensory perspective, the
appearances
of most phenomena are misleading. Increasingly sophisticated telescopes and microscopes have already shown us wonders we could never have accessed with our limited vision.

Even so, life's mysteries shouldn't be worshipped or dismissed because we can't see the whole picture. The moon, after all, seems to wax, wane, die, and be reborn each month, because it's reflecting a temporarily hidden sun in relation to the earth's shadow. And it is here that art, science, and
utility
merge. Lunar cycles inspire poets and control ocean tides. The soft, blue light flowing over the nighttime landscape is aesthetically stirring and deeply comforting — perhaps even more so because we now know that the harmonious interaction of
three
celestial bodies gives rise to this subtle nocturnal luminosity, motivating us to explore other areas where relationship creates functional, mutually supportive realities that are, at the same time, magnificent to behold.

Still, midnight travelers don't need a working knowledge of astronomy for the moon to light their way. And so it is with the invisible, inexplicable forces that horse trainers and other leaders can draw upon to reach their goals, and even help change the world,
before
cutting-edge science, let alone culturally accepted thought, can even begin to catch up.

People searching for soulful ways to unlock the mind often look to Buddhist and Taoist principles. But Midnight Merlin didn't require that I find a guru or subscribe to any belief system to practice mindfulness. He did, however, insist — upon the threat of death at times — that I develop this ability, fast. Yet I also knew that anytime he became too much for me, I had a whole herd of much gentler, highly experienced teachers munching hay in my own backyard. I often enlisted them as patient tutors for remedial skills that my thick human brain found challenging — and that my stubborn human ego was doubly reluctant to accept.

Horses embody many of the attitudes people access through more formal meditation techniques, including the ability to engage fully with reality. What seems so difficult for a grasping, hoarding, controlling, competitive human being comes easily to these highly social, intensely aware, nomadic prey animals. Horses are actually hardwired for the state of nonattachment championed by the Buddha. In the wild, they don't defend territory, build nests, live in caves, or store nuts for the winter. They move unprotected with the rhythms
of nature, cavorting through the snow, kicking up their heels on cool spring mornings, grazing peacefully in fields of flowing grass, despite a keen and constant awareness of predators lurking in the distance. While they react quickly in the face of danger, they also show remarkable resilience in recovering from traumatic events. They don't ruminate over and over and over again about the injustices of the past, clouding their vision and their enjoyment of life with ceaseless internal dialogues about how cruel it is that God invented lions.

But traumatic events in nature are different from the inescapable stress some horses endure in captivity, where they're forcefully pulled away from their mothers at six months, restrained, confined, and in many cases, isolated, if not physically abused. Many horse owners, influenced by behavioristic views of animals, treat their mounts like machines, becoming resentful, even violent, when they act “unpredictably.” Other people coddle these massive, agile creatures, talking to them like babies, never allowing them to grow up and claim their dignity as powerful, intelligent beings. Either way, limiting, preconceived notions cause both amateur and professional equestrians to disregard important nonverbal cues that come from the horse and their own bodies. When these valuable, in some cases lifesaving, communications are habitually ignored, unnecessary accidents and injuries invariably follow. It's not uncommon for riders to go through horse after horse, trying desperately to find that rare animal physically and mentally capable of fulfilling some lifelong competitive or recreational goal.

I myself was on this path when I realized I didn't have the skills to handle my first horse, Nakia. Even more disheartening, my first trainer's techniques escalated her confusion and frustration, creating an increasingly defiant, flighty horse. Several people advised me to sell this “dangerous, uncooperative” mare. Luckily, I found a gentle, experienced woman — with a small farm of her own — who appreciated the ex-racehorse's high-spirited nature. As Nakia stepped on the trailer and rode off into the sunset, I undertook a quest to find the right trainer and the perfect horse.

As it turns out, I never did find perfection. I found something much more interesting. In working with a series of horses who defied conventional training techniques and agendas, I stretched far beyond my own limited beliefs and perceptions about not only the human-equine relationship but the nature of reality itself, particularly in regard to “shared consciousness,” expanded awareness, surrender, and innovation. Along the way, I began to understand (viscerally, emotionally, and much later intellectually) what those ancient horse-taming tales tell us about the nonverbal genius of gifted leaders.

Lao-tzu observed that “it is upon disaster that good fortune rests,” pointing to what is perhaps the most potent Taoist paradox, one that my own growing herd challenged me to embrace over and over again. After twenty years living, working, and studying with these remarkable animals, writing about them through births, deaths, triumphs, and hardships, I can honestly say that the most profound transformations happened precisely when things didn't go my way — when my most reliable tools, ideas, training methods, and coping strategies failed and I had, well,
nothing
left to do.

Taoism, more than any other philosophy, recognizes that such impasses, while initially frustrating, even demoralizing, can be life changing in the best sense of the word —
if
we adopt a more innovative approach. And for Lao-tzu, the most powerful strategy, oddly enough, involved
wu-wei,
which translates as “not doing,” “not forcing,” or “not striving.” Wu-wei is
not
advice to “do nothing.” It's not a recommendation to pack up and go home, and it's most definitely not achieved by glossing over the challenging elements of a situation. It's about suspending the all-too-human fixation on what
should
or
shouldn't
happen to notice what
is
happening — without flinching, running off, engaging in wishful thinking, or trying to aggressively control the situation.