The Second Arrow; the Buddhist parable of self harm

The Second Arrow: What Horses Can Teach Us About the Stories We Tell Ourselves

There is an ancient Buddhist teaching known as the parable of the two arrows.

The Buddha taught that when something painful happens, it is as though we have been struck by an arrow.

The first arrow is the thing that actually happened.

Someone rejects us.

A relationship ends.

Our body hurts.

We lose something we love.

Someone doesn’t reply to our message.

A horse walks away from us.

That is the first arrow.

And sometimes the first arrow genuinely hurts.

But then something interesting happens.

Very often, we pick up another arrow and shoot ourselves with it.

The second arrow is the story we create about what happened.

Someone doesn’t reply to our message and we think:

They’re losing interest in me.

A relationship changes and we think:

I’m going to be alone.

Something we have worked hard for doesn’t succeed and we think:

I’m a failure.

And during Meditate With Horses, perhaps a horse we’ve been sitting quietly beside suddenly gets up and walks away.

Almost instantly, the mind can say:

He doesn’t like me.

The horse walked away.

That’s the fact.

“He doesn’t like me” is the story.

And horses give us an extraordinary opportunity to notice just how quickly we confuse the two.

Horses don’t explain themselves

A horse cannot reassure us:

“Don’t worry, I’m just thirsty.”

He doesn’t tell us that he’s noticed something at the other end of the field, that another horse has moved, that he wants to graze somewhere else or that he simply feels like moving.

He just walks away.

And suddenly we are left alone with our interpretation.

This is one of the reasons I find sitting quietly with horses such a powerful practice.

They become a kind of mirror.

Not because they magically reveal everything about us, but because our reactions to them can reveal the stories already running inside us.

A horse turns his head away.

I’m being rejected.

A horse approaches somebody else.

She likes them more than me.

A horse doesn’t come over.

I’m doing this wrong.

A horse moves away while we’re touching him.

He doesn’t trust me.

But what do we actually know?

The horse moved.

Everything after that may be interpretation.

Why do we fire the second arrow?

Understanding the parable is relatively easy.

Learning to stop firing that second arrow is where the real work begins — and where most of us get stuck.

We shoot second arrows out of habit.

Something happens and, within seconds, the mind starts constructing a narrative around it.

When our partner goes quiet, we decide they’re pulling away.

When a project fails, we think we are failing.

When somebody looks distracted while we’re talking, we wonder what we’ve done wrong.

We aren’t necessarily responding to what is happening anymore.

We’re responding to what we think it means.

And those interpretations don’t come from nowhere.

They may have been shaped by previous relationships, childhood experiences, rejection, abandonment, shame or simply years of repeating the same beliefs about ourselves.

The present moment touches an old wound — and suddenly an entire story comes alive.

So how do we stop?

There is a beautifully simple question we can ask when we notice anxiety rising:

What is happening right now?

Not:

What might happen?

Not:

What does this mean?

Not:

What happened last time?

Simply:

What is happening right now?

It’s an invitation to come out of the story and return to reality.

And that’s something horses are remarkably good at bringing us back to.

Feel your feet on the earth.

Notice your breathing.

Feel what’s happening inside your body.

Listen to the sounds around you.

Notice the horse.

Notice where he is standing.

Notice what he’s actually doing.

And then ask yourself:

What do I know to be true in this moment?

Fact or story?

Try separating the two.

Fact:

“My partner hasn’t replied to my message for four hours.”

Story:

“They don’t care about me anymore.”

Or:

Fact:

“The horse walked away from me.”

Story:

“He doesn’t like me.”

We call this fact-checking the mind.

And it’s surprisingly powerful.

Because when we start separating the event from the story about the event, we often discover that the first arrow is much easier to hold than the second.

The late text may be uncomfortable.

The story that we’re being abandoned can be terrifying.

Being stuck in traffic is inconvenient.

The furious internal conversation about how this always happens to me can ruin an afternoon.

A horse walking away may create a moment of disappointment.

The belief that I’m unwanted can touch a wound we’ve carried for decades.

This isn’t about suppressing our feelings

Dropping the second arrow doesn’t mean pretending everything is fine.

It doesn’t mean becoming detached or refusing to acknowledge pain.

If something hurts, it hurts.

The first arrow is real.

The practice is learning not to immediately add another layer of suffering through assumptions, predictions and judgments.

We can feel disappointment without becoming a disappointment.

We can experience rejection without deciding we are unlovable.

We can experience uncertainty without immediately filling the empty space with the worst possible explanation.

Sometimes deeper healing also means becoming curious about where our stories came from.

Why did my mind immediately interpret distance as abandonment?

Why did somebody’s silence make me feel unsafe?

Why did the horse walking away suddenly make me feel unwanted?

There may be an older wound underneath the present reaction.

When we recognise that, we can meet ourselves with curiosity and compassion rather than judgment.

And sometimes the horse comes back

This is one of my favourite things about working with horses.

We don’t chase them.

We don’t demand connection.

We don’t decide that their movement away means rejection.

We allow them agency.

And sometimes, after walking away, the horse turns around.

Perhaps ten minutes later, he wanders back.

He stands beside us.

Maybe he lowers his head.

Nothing needed fixing.

The story existed only in our minds.

The horse was simply being a horse.

And perhaps that is one of the greatest lessons they offer us:

Let this moment be this moment.

The next time life fires the first arrow and you notice that familiar wave of anxiety moving through your body, stop.

Feel your feet.

Take a breath.

Look at what’s actually in front of you.

And ask:

What is happening right now?

Stay with the facts.

Let the event be an event.

Let the feeling be a feeling.

And, whenever you can, leave the second arrow on the ground.

Nothing more. Nothing less.