What are we holding onto that is now only holding us back?
To complement your reflection on “releasing your cows” (view our New Year post), below is an excerpt from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book The Path of Emancipation. In this excerpt, Thay beautifully elaborates on what it means to identify and release pieces of our life that we believe make us happy, but are actually burdensome.
Question: Thay, there are many questions about cows. One such question was whether our discriminating mind, our tendency to form judgments, is a cow that we should consider releasing.
Thay: When I use the word “cow,” its first meaning is something that you think is essential for your happiness. It is something you have never questioned: a position in society, a business, a diploma, an ideology. But when you get it, it seems you do not have the happiness you wanted, and you continue to suffer, even if you actually have your cows. We are invited to practice looking deeply into the nature of our cows to see whether they are really necessary for our well-being and happiness. If we find out that it is only a cow that creates more anxiety and fear, then we will be able to let it go. That is why I have asked all of you to practice looking deeply and to call your cows by their true names.
The other day, I spoke about a friend in Germany who was able to release many of his cows. Among his cows were some that looked very spiritual. He was the chairman of many Buddhist organizations. He attended a lot of meetings and did a lot of work. It took a lot of his time and energy and caused him a lot of stress. He could not enjoy his breathing, walking, or sitting. He didn’t feel happy. To be happy, he had to release some of his cows. The more cows we release, the greater our freedom and happiness. This is what I mean by cows.
Maybe you have a job, but you think it is not enough, so you get a second job. You work overtime, thinking you need to create more opportunities to increase your wealth or fame. You get sucked into that way of thinking for a long time. But one day you find out that you are not really happy, and you really want happiness. You do not want to waste your energy in worries, anger, and so on; you are determined to let go of your cows. Each of us can look deeply, identify our cows, and release them. A cow can also be an ideology or an idea that we take great pride in. We think that we are someone very special if we follow that idea or ideology. But if it hasn’t really given us any true happiness, it is a cow that we need to release.
I spoke before about a monk who was very busy building a temple. You may ask, “What is wrong with a monk building a temple?” When he was building it, he worried so much about the temple that he didn’t have time to practice walking meditation, mindful breathing, or to enjoy touching the present moment. He was sacrificing his own happiness. He sacrificed the most important thing and focused on the less important things. When the monk complained to a friend, his friend said, “Why don’t you become a real monk? A real monk is free from cows.” So even a temple can be a cow. It does not mean he should not build the temple, but there are ways to build temples without making them into cows, and where you still remain a free person. Whether something is a cow or not depends on your behavior. Releasing cows does not mean releasing responsibilities.