Releasing Our Cows
The new year - and decade - is the perfect time to begin anew with ourselves and let go of what is no longer serving us.
Inspired by a story of the Buddha, we sometimes refer to letting go as “releasing our cows.” This week, we hope you will have some time to consider what kinds of “cows” you can release. Below is a printable worksheet to aid your reflection. You are welcome to share this teaching and worksheet with your Sangha, family or other community. We all have many cows to release!
Excerpt of a Dharma Talk given by Thich Nhat Hanh in Plum Village on 28 July 2006
This year, while I was leading a retreat in the Netherlands and a Day of Mindfulness in Belgium, I learned that our Dharma Teacher Karl Schmied died in Germany. He was a good Dharma Teacher. He began with practicing Tibetan Buddhism, but when he came to a retreat offered by Thay in Germany, he liked it very much so he continued to study and practice with us. He helped organize many retreats in Germany for Thay and the Plum Village Sangha. He was an excellent Sangha builder. Every time we landed in Germany, it was he who welcomed us at the airport, and every time we left Germany, he was always at the airport to see us off for many, many years. The Sangha in Germany has grown into a very big, solid Sangha. There are many members of the Order of Interbeing.
In Germany, every two years there is a big gathering of Protestants, and Karl arranged it so that every time, Thay could attend and give a talk. One time after a talk, five thousand people, mostly Christians, joined me to practice walking meditation in Frankfurt. The police arranged for us to practice walking meditation on the boulevards in Frankfurt. It was very beautiful.
Karl’s Dharma name was True Dharma Eyes. Thay transmitted the lamp to him to be a lay Dharma Teacher of Plum Village. After that, Karl led many retreats in Austria, Germany, Italy, and so on. When I heard that he was very sick, I asked Sister Chan Khong to come with me and visit him in his home. We spent two days and two nights with him. We knew that he was dying and he also knew that he was dying. I felt very lucky to have the opportunity to be there and spend a few days with him. We did not meet other people at all. We just stayed with him and spent time sitting together. He was a successful businessman. He had a very expensive, beautiful car made in Japan. When you sit in his car, you don’t feel that you are going very fast, but I was mindful and I saw that the car went very fast. That is why when we had a chance to stop the car and do some walking in the woods, I collected a small pine cone and offered it to him. I said to him, “Karl, every time you see this pine cone, you know that you have to go more slowly.” So he kept that pine cone in order not to talk while driving and not to go too fast. And he kept his promise.
I remember one time after Karl’s first retreat, he said goodbye to us in order to go to a business meeting in the South of Germany. I asked him whether it was possible not to go to the meeting and attend the second retreat. He said, “No, it is not possible.” But when I finished the orientation talk at the second retreat, I saw that he was sitting in the crowd. It turned out that while driving, he was reflecting on what Thay had said during the first retreat, that you have to learn how to release your cows. If you have too many cows to take care of, then you have no time.
Many of you may not have heard about cow releasing. The story is like this: One day the Buddha was sitting with his monks in the woods. They had just finished their mindful lunch and were about to start a question and answer session. A peasant passed by and asked the Buddha, “Dear monk, have you seen my cows passing by here?”
The Buddha said, “What cows?”
“My cows, six of them, I don’t know why but this morning they all ran away. I had also cultivated three acres of sesame seeds, but this year the insects ate them all. I think I am going to kill myself. I have lost everything!”
The Buddha said, “Dear friend, we have not seen your cows passing by here. You better look for them in the other direction.” After the farmer had gone, the Buddha looked at his monks and smiled and said, “My dear friends, do you know that you are lucky, you do not have any cows to lose.”
Sometimes, we possess a number of things, and we think that these possessions are very crucial to our happiness, our safety. But if you look deeply, you’ll see that maybe what you possess are obstacles for your happiness. If you know how to let them go, to release your cow, happiness becomes possible.
During the Dharma talk, I advised people to write down the names of their cows on a sheet of paper and to look deeply to see whether they are truly essential for their happiness. Otherwise, they should learn to release their cows. You have an idea as to how you can be happy, and you are stuck in that idea. That idea is a cow, a big cow. If you cannot get that position, you cannot be happy, that is a cow, a big cow. If you cannot get that diploma, you suffer all your life, and this is a cow. Sometimes, our cow is our belief in a kind of doctrine, a kind of ideology. You think that happiness will not be possible without that doctrine, that ideology. There are countries that hold onto their ideology for fifty years, seventy years. They suffer a lot before they can release their cow. So the most difficult cow to release is your idea about your happiness. And there are other cows around you, you think that you cannot survive without these cows. But in fact you suffer because of them. So halfway to the meeting, Karl decided to release his cow, he made a U-turn and came back to the retreat.
Read the full Dharma talk here.
To complement your reflection, we have also included an excerpt about releasing cows from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book The Path of Emancipation in this supplemental post.