What can I do with an old tree?

Source: Chuang Tzu
Translated by: Burton Watson

Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu, "I have a big tree named ailanthus. Its trunk is too gnarled and bumpy to apply a measuring line to, its branches too bent and twisty to match up to a compass or square. You could stand it by the road and no carpenter would look at it twice. Your words, too, are big and useless, and so everyone alike spurns them!"

Chuang Tzu said, "Maybe you've never seen a wildcat or a weasel. It crouches down and hides, watching for something to come along. It leaps and races east and west, not hesitating to go high or low-until it falls into the trap and dies in the net. Then again there's the yak, big as a cloud covering the sky. It certainly knows how to be big, though it doesn't know how to catch rats. Now you have this big tree and you're distressed because it's useless. Why don't you plant it in Not-Even-Anything Village, or the field of Broad-and-Boundless, relax and do nothing by its side, or lie down for a free and easy sleep under it? Axes will never shorten its life, nothing can ever harm it. If there's no use for it, how can it come to grief or pain?"

The Horse Expert

Source: Taoism
Translated by: Unknown

There was once a king who decided he wanted to make a present of a new horse to his daughter and he sent for his chief advisor to ask him his opinion.

“I’m afraid I know nothing of horses,” his advisor replied when he arrived, “But I do know of man in a province not far from here who is an expert in the field. We can trust his judgement.”

The King was delighted and he sent out a dispatch right away to the expert, requesting that he wished to buy his best horse. A reply came a few days later that he had the perfect horse in mind, a black stallion of the highest quality. The king grew even more excited and began telling all his subjects about the creature that was to arrive.

When the horse finally showed up though, it turned out to be a dun-coloured mare. The king flew intro a great rage and sent for his counsellor.

“I thought you said this man was an expert on horses!” he yelled, “But he can’t even get the colour or sex right of the animal.”

“Oh, has he really gone as far as that?” the counsellor gasped in admiration, “When I knew him he was able to tell the quality of a horse from its look and posture – now he has gone beyond such exterior signs. He sees so much of the inner essence of the animal that everything else ceases to count.”

And, sure enough, the horse turned out to be of the highest standards.