Taming the Wild Horse: An Annotated Translation and Study of the Daoist Horse Training Pictures by Louis Komjathy (review)

Louis Komjathy’s latest book, Taming the Wild Horse: An Annotated Translation and Study of the Daoist Horse Training Pictures, focuses on a set of illustrated poems from the Three Essentials for Cultivating Perfection According to the Highest Vehicle (Shangsheng xiuzhen sanyao 上乘修真三要, DZ 267), a canonical text from the thirteenth century. Komjathy argues the value of the Daoist Horse Training Pictures is that they form a “map of contemplative practice and contemplative experience” still relevant today (p. ix) and that to study them should itself be taken as a form of contemplative practice (p. x). These two points are critical for understanding how Komjathy views the subject material, as both a guide to mastering a specific style of Daoist meditation and as an act of meditation itself. This emphasis on praxis also identifies who is the book’s primary audience, namely, fellow practitioners and those interested in contemporary Daoist contemplative practices.

Taming the Wild Horse is divided into three sections: introduction, translation of the poems with primary commentary, and Komjathy’s own exegesis. The introduction provides historical and religious context for the Daoist Horse Training Pictures. The attributed author of the illustrated poems and commentary is a Yuanming laoren 圓明老人, whom Komjathy convincingly identifies as Gao Daokuan (高道 寬, 1195–1277), an early Quanzhen 全眞 monastic. The first chapter also briefly covers Quanzhen monastic teachings, the pictures’ connection to the famous ox-herding pictures of Chan Buddhism, and an overview of Daoist meditative practices. Undoubtedly because the background provided in the book is so limited, Komjathy frequently must enjoin the reader to see other works, usually his own, for further information. The second chapter connects wildness and domestication with the Daoist ideal of self-cultivation, considers “the question of the animal itself” (discriminating between “the animal as other-construct, symbolic animals, and actual animals” in the process), studies horses as a symbol in both Chinese tradition and Daoism, and offers “an examination of actual horses in the sociohistorical context of Daokuan’s life” (p. 29).

This overly broad collection of topics is likely the result of Komjathy attempting to cover four interpretive approaches to the Daoist Horse Training Pictures in a single chapter. Splitting this chapter into two so that historical and cultural studies approaches were one chapter and animal and contemplative studies approaches were another would have greatly benefited the book. As it is, Komjathy raises some important points, particularly in connecting wildness and domestication of animals with self-cultivation and a return to the Dao, but they are just starting to be developed when the reader is rushed off to the next topic. The question of the animal is a fascinating discussion, but the space devoted to animal and contemplative studies approaches means that the historical and cultural contexts are barely developed. For example, I was left wishing the influence of the reigning dynasties from the steppe on Daokuan’s choice of subject had been more thoroughly addressed, given that Daokuan was active in North China during the Jin-Yuan period.

The true value of Taming the Wild Horse lies in its second and third sections. Komjathy’s translation of the text and its commentary is both elegant and readable. He has wisely placed each of the Daoist Horse Training pictures on a full page with its accompanying poem on the opposite, allowing the reader to contemplate the image and words together. The original Chinese is helpfully included as well, so that the reader can consult it, if desired. The one problem, which mars the otherwise excellent translation, is Komjathy’s curious insistence on translating mutong (牧童) as “shepherd.” Mutong is the term used in the poems to describe the individual who tames the horse and is used generally for a person who herds large livestock. As such, it is extremely discordant to see this person called a shepherd. It should...