This is the first of a series of talks exploring the Ox-herding pictures, a set of teachings on the Zen path of Awakening. This first stage is foundational and is often called The Search, Arousing the Mind of Awakening or Awakening Bodhicitta.

Each of the Ox-Herding pictures includes a stanza and a poem. The stanza reads as a teaching to accompany the image. What follows below is an excerpt of this Dharma Talk.

The Ox has never really gone astray, so why search for it? Having turned his back on his True-nature, the man cannot see it. Because of his defilements he has lost sight of the Ox. Suddenly he finds himself confronted by a maze of crisscrossing roads. Greed for worldly gain and dread of loss spring up like searing flames, ideas of right and wrong dart out like daggers.

Here we are confronted with one of the seeming paradoxes of dharma practice. The OX, our true nature–has never gone anywhere. It is right here. Prior to all experience. What has been with us since the moment we were born, through every breath, heart-beat, heart-break, loss, joy, thought, delusion, delight.

The sense of being myself, prior to all conditioned ways of being / behaving.

If it is so close, if it hasn’t gone astray–why search? Why practice?

And yet, and I think we can resonate with this. Having turned our backs on our true nature–we don’t see. We’ve been conditioned to seek pleasure else-where, to look for validation and safety from others, to move towards success, to avoid failure, to appear competent and knowledgeable and avoid feeling incompetent or unknowledgeable. And so the maze of criss-crossing roads. 

Or you could say it another way, our feelings of isolation, of being separate, unloveable, or being afraid of being unloveable, or our need for approval—dominate our attention. Creating confusion, we start relating to the world as if things weren’t interconnected, as if we could just do it right and everything would work out, we start to blame ourselves or others for our conditions.

And mean while, the freedom and love we seek. Is just right here. In the present. Yet, we don’t quite know how to be present with ourselves any more.

In the long arc of practice, this stage or picture represents beginning to really see our own ignorance, isolation, confusion or our own suffering, and the insight or recognition –wait, it doesn’t have to be this way.

I remember someone saying, you are not your thoughts. And really being able to hear it, like oh, wow–there is a me who isn’t this confusion, this shame, this anxiety, this narrating, this planning. Who is that me?

Another way this comes up is through reflecting on the state of the world, seeing all of the division, conflict, war, discrimination–and recognizing, it doesn’t have to be this way. There is another way.

…

The talk continues by exploring some of the traditional reflections for Awakening Bodhicitta or cultivating motivation on the path of practice. This is a meditation on our own motivation for practice. How that motivation may have changed over the years, and how we continue to connect to motivation in whatever season of practice we find ourselves in.

As always, I offer this as an expression of my practice and vow. Please feel free to leave a comment or reflection if anything touches or challenges you. I find the connection of community such a vital part of the of Awakening. The ways our hearts and minds shape and are shaped by each other’s is truly precious.

This talk involves some screen shares where we look at some of the images of this OX-herding picture together. I am including the links below.

Mumon Roshi’s Commentary

Daido Roshi’s Commentary

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