The Ten Ox Heading pictures illustrate the journey we all take into spiritual inquiry. They were originally compiled by the Sung Dynasty Zen Master Kakuan. The Ten Ox Hearding pictures encapsulate the teaching beyond words, touching what we all know. I first encountered them in the famous book Zen Flesh Zen Bones, which is one of the earliest books post war to attempt to make Zen Buddhism reachable in English, calling them 10 Bulls, in that book Paul Reps was able to include reproductions of Tomikichiro Tokuriki’s woodblock prints, the originals of which reside at Jizo-in Temple in Kyoto. Tokuriki’s pictures are of course well known now on the internet and interested readers will easily find them.
The Ten Ox Hearding pictures, are everyone’s universal journey in life and Zen. The Ox initially represents the separation we feel we are in, What is this? Who is this? Who is asking? How do I resolve this? And the initial sense of present, the Ox is missing, but the Ox is also imagined to be salient and tangible, something to be found and retrieved.
The paradox of Buddhism has always been, to cure suffering, to have an Awakening realization, we must start from feeling there is something lost, missing, ultimately mind itself. Then we must catch that, only to learn how to let it go, transform. Then finally we become useful in world, because without that any realization is incomplete and still tainted.
In Buddhism there is the Awakening of the Tathagata Buddha himself, which would have been incomplete if he had not undertaken to teach afterwards. In the present age when we are flooded by everything around us in ways that we have never before, clarity is more important than ever before. We find ourselves alone in the noise of this world wondering…
The Ox is lost, escaped. The intangible Dharma, It. We know It is out there somewhere.
Where to direct our attention? How to keep our attention? How to discern? With nothing and yet we can’t see anything.
It remains at a distance. Following the traces, taking action to seek it out. Practice begins out of affinity. Who am I? What am I? What is this? What is It? Questions with unseen answers, yet knowing and experiencing circumstances to seek It out. Something of a path hints the way, yet it’s far off.
The Ox is seen, we see deeper into the Great Question but we still have no answer. The Ox is separate, that’s how we see our selves. Everyday there are things that seem so important, so separate, even seeking Great Awakening is an Ox in the distance. In fact the size of the dilemma is shaping up. But faith makes its appearance as well as doubt.
The struggle. Sitting zazen, reading the sutras, one on one with our teacher, and the personal moments we have of Great Doubt and Great Faith. Like struggling to bring the Ox under control.
Catching it, small realization, though as yet incomplete. The Ox captured but still side by side.
Riding it home, in harmony with the Ox, no longer wild, tame. This is in fact the most dangerous time, when we might settle for small achievement and mistake taming the Ox for completion of the Great Matter of life and death.
Returning home, non-differentiation, no Ox, no chasing. Nothing separate. Zen teaches that there is in the end no Buddha, nothing separate, Mind it’s self is Buddha, the morning sunrise and the evening moonrise are just facets of the same truth. The home we return to is the home we never left.
Completion. The realization of absolute spirituality, Awakening and Ignorance, beyond distinctions. The Ox, the Dharma, all our ideas no longer exist.
The source of all things. Real Realization, Awakening sees the true relationship of all things. Returning never having truly left. All things as one, not two not three.
Returning to the world. The Bodhisattva Way. True spiritual realization, matured, is practiced in the world, having left the house of minds. Without this we cannot say the Dharma, It, is truly known and functioning.
Philosophically Zen is shares with many other traditions the embracing of doubt and faith. But faith in Buddhism is not the faith in other that it is in traditions such as Christianity for example faith in Buddhism is self faith, as is doubt, not just doubt of the world around us, such as the evil one tricked me, but doubt as in what am I doing? Faith and doubt take on the shape of self responsibility. Then of course Zen uniquely follows the historical Buddha’s example of meditation and the precedence of interaction he showed with the disciple Arhats, the one on one dynamic exchange that helps us clarify and authenticate. The Tathagata Buddha opened his eye, he took this same path as described in the Ten Ox Hearding pictures, which is also your journey, and then he passed that to the next generation and so forth.
Though we might say details of life have changed, 2500 years ago is a long time to know their lives, in fact it’s inconceivable to us in the present age, however the Ten Ox Hearding Pictures speak across time to common humanity. This has always been the core of Buddhism. Buddhism itself is new in the length of time of human history, it’s a single section of a tall bamboo by comparison, but the bamboo of today is still the bamboo of millions of years ago, just as we today can see what Zen master Kakuan saw, and the Tathagata Buddha saw. In this sense of common purpose and destination there is no age.
In Buddhism wisdom is not just a philosophical ideal, it’s the embodiment of truth, Bodhi, and therefore the embodiment of Compassion. Not stopping at Buddha and self Awakening but becoming the Bodhisattva, beyond self, wisdom shared.
Mujyo Williams
Trained as a Zen monk at Tofukuji Rinzai Daihozan Senmondojo, Kyoto, Japan, and is Kiedo Fukushima’s disciple in the Zenkei Shibayama lineage.
He is the head of the Australian Zen Studies Institute.