Ox Herding

Ox Tales, 5

Chokei Daian said:

I have lived on Isan Mountain for 30 years, eating Isan rice and shitting Isan shit. However, I haven't studied Isan Zen.

I have just watched over an old castrated water buffalo. When it wandered into the weeds, I would drag it out. When it strayed into someone's garden, I would chastise it.

Though I have bawled it out for a long time, people would come to it and say, "Oh you poor creature!"

But now it has turned into a white ox, right out in the open.

It is always before me. All day long it shines brightly. Even if I try to drive it off, it never leaves.

Some of us have never seen such an ox. Maybe some have never even looked.

But, as today's video demonstrates, an ox can become gentle and bright, so that even children can care for it. Someone only has to do the work of taming it. How about you? How about me?

Thank you for reading this week's Ox Tales. Best wishes in your herding!

Barry

Ox Tales, 4

If you were born in 1937, 1949, 1961, 1973, 1985, 1997 or 2009 (give or take a few months), then you're an Ox in the astrological system used in East Asia.

Ox people have ox natures: steady, persistent and hard-working. They also display strong "opposites mind," readily classifying experience into right/wrong, good/bad, us/them, etc.

Although an ox might seem placid and calm, it can readily explode into stubborn dogmatism or destructive anger.

We might not have much faith in this astrological view of human beings. But if we study the ox at hand, we might discover more than a little truth in it.

Fortunately, the ox can become a true friend - loyal, patient, generous and responsible. All we have to do is care for it on a daily basis.

Ox Tales, 3

The American lumberjack, Paul Bunyan, might have been a relatively ordinary fellow if not for his great blue ox, Babe. Babe was a nearly unfathomable creature and, in that way, similar to the ox that many of us know quite intimately.

The storyteller, S.E. Schlosser, offered the following description of Babe:

He grew so big that 42 axe handles plus a plug of tobacco could fit between his eyes and it took a murder of crows a whole day to fly from one horn to the other.

The laundryman used his horns to hang up all the camp laundry, which would dry lickety-split because of all the wind blowing around at that height.

Whenever he got an itch, Babe the Blue Ox had to find a cliff to rub against, 'cause whenever he tried to rub against a tree it fell over and begged for mercy.

To whet his appetite, Babe would chew up thirty bales of hay, wire and all. It took six men with picaroons to get all the wire out of Babe's teeth after his morning snack. Right after that he'd eat a ton of grain for lunch and then come pestering around the cook - Sourdough Sam - begging for another snack.

I suspect that anyone who gives some attention to their own ox understands just how vast and voracious it can be.

But, if we can tame this creature, then (like Paul Bunyan) we'll have a useful helpmate as we go through life.

From This Shore

Joseph, of Somewhere in Dhamma, today posted a notice about From This Shore, a photoblog documenting the lives of Korean Buddhist nuns.

It's a beautiful site - and I encourage you to visit it regularly!

Photo of Mun Gang and Seung An Sunims dishing out rice by sakyadita, published on From This Shore

Ox Tales, 2

In the ancient world, people believed that bees were born out of the carcasses of dead oxen.

They even had a word for this event:  bugonia.

Bugonia means "ox birth." And in the fourth book of the Georgics, the Roman poet Virgil provides a description of this process:

But sudden, strange to tell
A portent they espy: through the oxen's flesh,
Waxed soft in dissolution, hark! there hum
Bees from the belly; the rent ribs overboil
In endless cloud they spread them, till at last
On yon tree-top together fused they cling,
And drop their cluster from the bending boughs.

So take good care of your ox, even when it becomes waxed soft in dissolution. Your honey depends on it.

Thanks to Ellen for alerting me to this word.

Ox Tales, 1

I disagree with a lot of the way you herd your ox.

You disagree with a lot of the way I herd my ox.

And that's how range wars get started.

On Certainty, 5

When we feel the impulse toward certainty, we might ask ourselves a couple of simple questions:  Am I right? Am I wrong?

These questions appears naturally in human life and the tension they produce can result in great art, including the blues.

Who doesn't feel the uncertainty of the blues from time to time? And, when feeling that way, who doesn't need a great tune to ease things along?

Keb' Mo' satisfies the need. One of the great modern Delta blues players, his music cures what ails, especially the ailment of certainty. And the song featured in today's video, "Am I Wrong?," certainly makes me feel better. Turn it up and enjoy!

Thank you for reading Ox Herding. Best wishes for an unpredictable weekend!

Barry

On Certainty, 4

The Buddha's teaching, as expressed in the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, can appear rational and perhaps even reassuring to many of us.

But these teachings lead to outcomes that we might find less palatable. For example, in the Samyutta Nikaya (12.15) the Buddha tells Maha Kaccana:

Everything exists - that is one extreme.

Everything doesn't exist - that is the other extreme.

Avoiding these two extremes,

The Tathagata teaches the dhamma by the middle way.

I remember when I first read this phrase - goosebumps arose on my arm as I realized that this was not the cozy, familiar middle way between luxury and asceticism. Rather, this statement of the middle way radically and completely cut away every sense of certainty, leaving me . . . where?

With this teaching, the Buddha plunges the practitioner into profoundly unfamiliar territory - the unknown spaciousness where name and form no longer obtain.

For me, it's the Buddha's most profound declaration of don't know.

On Certainty, 3

In a recent comment, Suzanne (who writes Nothing Exists, Despite Appearances) offered this joke:

Christ came out of the desert, having had his awakening.

God, wanting to gloat a little, called a meeting with Satan.

"Well," said God, "they all know the truth now! What are you going to do about it?"

"I'm going to help them organize it," said Satan.

God sighed, resignedly.

Who doesn't love the certainty and predictability that comes with organization? Perhaps that's why we organize nearly every aspect of life, from recreation to religion.

Even Buddhism, the great tradition of wild mind, promises the refuge of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.

When I began Zen practice, I took greedy comfort in this refuge and worked hard to master the forms, take the precepts and pass the kong-ans.

Yet, despite some accomplishment, I still bifurcate the world with certainty, impose organizational schemes, and hide behind tradition. In so doing, I make Satan proud.

Still . . . something has changed . . .

Nowadays, I sometimes get a glimpse of how certainty, organization, form and structure insulate me from the wildness of life. In those moments of clarity, mind's desire for certainty and organization can become yet another path to freedom.

Ah, this is how I am, just now!

Sometimes I can't help but break into laughter. And honest laughter, surely, is the great antidote to the certainty promised by Satan.

On Certainty, 2

If you're a Zen student, you might have encountered this story (case 20 from the Book of Serenity):

Dizang asked Fayan, "Where are you going?"

Fayan said, "Around on pilgrimage."

Dizang said, "What is the purpose of your pilgrimage?"

Fayan said, "I don't know."

Dizang said, "Not knowing is most intimate."

This "not knowing," which originated with Bodhidharma and runs constant in the Zen tradition, cuts against the "purpose" of every thing, completely undoing certainty.

I'm intent on certainty, despite years of Zen training. And, since intentions drive actions, certainty shows up frequently in this blog. (I'm certain of it!) Fortunately, readers frequently catch me out.

It also shows up in every other area of my life (since life is never fragmented). Fortunately, my wife and friends frequently catch me out.

Still, despite their best efforts, I continue to lean toward fixity in nearly every moment.

We can psychoanalyze this leaning, of course, and learn that it emerges from fear. And we can learn how fear emerges from attachment and aversion.

But when we commit to the study the mind, we might actually observe the movement toward certainty in each moment. Through such ongoing investigation, we might also discover the humility of not knowing.

Then we might relax with the flux of life. We might find curiosity, delight and even amazement. And we might even accept the inevitable, certain outcome of life.

When Death Comes
by Mary Oliver
(from New and Selected Poems)

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measles-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.