Gratitude for Challenge
- Grant Goulet
- Dec 6, 2024
- 7 min read

Talk offered as a ‘Wisdom Wednesday’ at Mountain Cloud Zen Center; November 27, 2024.
I’d like to begin this evening with a little parable …
Once upon a time, an affluent farmer approached Buddha with great hope. He prostrated before the sage and sought his blessings.
“O Venerable One!” the farmer said, “I have a major problem and I know only you can help me.”Buddha kept quiet and the man went on to narrate that his good-for-nothing son was troubling him and that he was mad at his wife because she supported her son over him.
The man said, “Do something so their minds change and they realize how much I’m doing for them.”“I can’t solve this problem for you,” Buddha replied and lowered his eyes again, in a meditative state.
The farmer told Buddha how he was worried about the upcoming harvest as the weather didn’t seem too favorable and the monkeys were destroying his crop.“I can’t help you with this one either,” Buddha said calmly.
Still hoping for the powers of Buddha, he told him that many people owed him money and he was having a hard time recovering it from his debtors. And that he too owed money to lenders and creditors. He asked Buddha if the sage could give him any remedy or amulet.“Hmm…” Buddha said, “I can’t solve this problem for you.”
“What good are you then?!” the man yelled. “Everyone says you are the enlightened one and here you can’t solve any of my problems. Is there absolutely nothing you can do? I’m tired of my terrible life.”“You see,” Buddha said patiently, “at any point in time, you’ll always have 84 problems in your life. "My teaching can't help you with the first 83 problems, but perhaps it can help with the 84th."
"What's that?" the farmer asked. "The 84th problem," the Buddha said, "is that you want to get rid of the first 83 problems. If you understand that life is never without challenges, it won’t look so bad. Learn to see life beyond what you want to see.”
I want to talk this evening about problems, or challenges. The parable highlights our need to recognize the inevitability of challenge and to allow it to be as it is. But, in the spirit of this time of year—of giving thanks—I want to nudge us into gratitude … and not gratitude for the things or circumstances we want to have—that’s the introductory level—but gratitude for our “83 problems,” for those circumstances and situations that inevitably arise, that we think we don’t want, that we resist, and would change at the push of a button, if we could.
Now, before proceeding, I feel it’s important for me to add a small asterisk: I’m not speaking from a place of expertise on some of life’s more substantial difficulties, like significant health issues, the loss of a child, systemic oppression, or the experience of homelessness. But, of course, serious challenge is ‘on the menu’ for all of us, in one form or another; it’s usually just a matter of time. It could be, however, that gratitude has no place within some of these—that I don’t yet know, but I’m likely to find out, as we all are.
But … before you change the channel … I don’t think this disqualifies a perspective on the topic. After all, The First Noble Truth tells us that life is suffering—life is challenge—and all we can really know is our own internal experience of life, which is guaranteed to be full of challenges across a spectrum of intensity, despite what outward appearances may portray. So, in a very real sense, we’re all experts on the topic.
Much of our resistance to challenge rises out of the ‘scourge of comfort’—our innate, and strong, inclination towards ease, stasis, and the fulfillment of our expectations. We hold this unexamined assumption that when life finally ‘leaves us alone’—when the 83 problems evaporate—all will be well. But, aside from this point never actually arriving, we should still question if this is what we truly desire. I want to go into this and perhaps see if we can’t ‘rotate’ our perspective, first through the lens of a rather trivial, but demonstrative example.
Out running the other day I saw a billboard advertisement for a countertop device that makes cocktails “in under 30 seconds at the push of a button.” Of course, we’ve been inventing useful technologies—a tool used in a systematic way—for millennia, as a strategy for making our lives sustainable in the face of all manner of threat and challenge. And, depending on how you look at it, we did quite well at it. It seems, however, following from the explosive growth of the industrial revolution some 200 years ago, the quest for supreme ease and time-saving, through avoidance of challenge, has taken itself into absurdity, embodied here in the cocktail gizmo.
We really need to be asking ourselves what it is we think is on the other side of the elimination of challenge. And, in this case, what is it we’re trying to save all of this time for; towards what are we meant to be using all of this new found time? Surely we must have an abundance of it by now! Presumably, the tacit belief, and the ‘sales pitch,’ is ‘more leisure,’ ‘more ease.’ We’ve been hearing for decades how the proliferation of the personal computer would dramatically alter our allocation of time. In 1965, Joseph Froomkin of IBM predicted the sub-20-hour work week and the creation of a mass “leisure class.” Others at that time suggested a necessary adjustment to “leisurely, nonfunctional lives.” Despite that sounding like a living hell, it was meant to suggest progress; a shift away from toil and suffering. Clearly that’s not come to pass, and, if anything, this evolution to carrying around a computer in our pockets at all times has moved us in the opposite direction. Life is now ‘contrived urgency,’ and we seem to be at a ridiculous point of saving time on leisure—in this case making cocktails—to have more time for … what? … other leisure? We’re economizing even our leisure to such an extent that we no longer have any leisurely interests, aside from plopping down in front of the TV with a poorly made cocktail from a machine … but at least it was ready in under 30 seconds!
Beyond just saving time, this notion of technological innovation eliminating all of our challenges has risen to a new level in the wake of advances in Artificial Intelligence. I listened recently to a conversation between two rather smart and—I had thought—wise people talking about a utopian version of the AI-age, in which ‘technological maturity’ brings about the ‘solved world.’ What they mean by this is an end-state of innovation where our technology is sufficiently advanced to address and resolve all manner of practical concerns: a solved world in which challenges big and small are handled for us. Now, it’s natural to assume that, for example, the total eradication of disease would be a desirable outcome of this ‘solved world,’ one that would greatly reduce suffering. But here, I would pull in another parable of a Chinese farmer, and say “Perhaps” … because it doesn’t take much investigation to appreciate the enormous follow-on effects this would have. But we won’t chase that line of reasoning at the moment.
The broader point is that this view of challenge, as something to be avoided or passed off, fundamentally misses an integral aspect of the human condition. As Eckhart Tolle says, “lack of challenge will itself become your biggest challenge.” The fact is, we humans—all sentient beings, in fact—thrive in and through adversity. Our flourishing has never been separate from challenge and hardship, and is in fact an outcome of it. It’s the very cycle and interplay of selection and generativity—challenge and growth; contraction and expansion—that gives us evolution. For us to flourish is to struggle to become our ideal selves; always shifting, growing, failing, coming up behind obstacles, and veering down unknown paths. The reality is that, everything we want—anything actually worth having—is typically on the other side of something we think we don’t want.
But our ability to deceive ourselves is remarkable … delusions are indeed inexhaustible: we default into thinking that the purpose of life is getting what we want. But, think of how small and impoverished life would be if it only consisted of the predictability of comfort and the limited desires of this little self. Are the best stories ever the ones where everything goes well; are the most interesting and impactful people ever those that avoided challenge and sailed smoothly through life? It seems the answer is a universal ‘No.’ Indeed, if you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere all that worthwhile.
I’m thinking about this, as well, in relation to our practice and the upcoming Rohatsu Sesshin. Certainly, there’s a privilege in being able to take a week to sit on a cushion facing a wall, but also such courage in making direct contact with the very real physical and mental challenge of it. But, into that challenge we take the deeper knowing that the challenge itself is the Way. As we say, ‘practice-enlightenment.’ And we might also say, ‘adversity-flourishing.’ Inseparable.
Through this recognition of the value of challenge, and, in fact, the necessity for it, perhaps we can ‘rotate’ our perspective to view our ‘problems,’ not as something to be avoided or eliminated—even just tolerated—but as opportunities and essential elements for growth and development, and ingredients for a life worth living. If so, we’ve just crossed out the 84th problem, and may even feel a hint of gratitude for the other 83.
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The other parable mentioned …
Once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, all of his neighbors came around to commiserate. They said, “We are so sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is most unfortunate.” The farmer said, “Perhaps.”
The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it, and in the evening everybody came back and said, “Oh, isn’t that lucky. What a great turn of events. You now have eight horses!” The farmer again said, “Perhaps.”
The following day his son tried to ride one of the horses, and was thrown from it and broke his leg. The neighbors then said, “Oh dear, that’s too bad,” and the farmer responded, “Perhaps.”
The next day the conscription officers came around to conscript people into the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. Again all the neighbors came around and said, “Isn’t that great!” Again, he said, “Perhaps.”