108zenbooks

finding traces of the Ox

Shadow-lit by fireflies,
imprints in the snow,
dark grass pressed to earth ~

I know you are here.

In my joy,
I startle you away…

wait…

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Growing up as an immigrant child in a community that was xenophobic, yet which drew from a multicultural matrix, was a headtrip to say the least.  I think it was enough just to be one kind of different without adding a spiritual layer that would have separated me further.  So my searching was done quietly in the dark.  Books read late at night and hidden in the day.  Meditations when the house was empty.  Conversations redirected when questions arose about faith, religion, or ethnicity.  In my need to belong, I didn’t realize I was sweeping the ground clear of any traces of the Ox.

The Ox, however, is not easily dissuaded.  The traces began to appear through filaments of intellectual pursuits.  Understanding terms, concepts, the preferences of authors to state things this way and that.  Loori teaches that in this stage of the spiritual journey, the path is clear as daylight.  It is nothing other than our lives. I wish.  Well, it may be for those more spiritually endowed or tested.

What I recall is a lot of confusion.

Often, the trace of the Ox lead to a creature of a different ilk.  Meditation calmed the body but not the spirit.   Rituals soothed the soul but not the actions.  Later, community provided solace but not safety.  Strong desire can create wondrous illusions and with no community or fellow travellers, it was hard to know what was going to be useful and beneficial.  Externally, the journey was Dewey-decimal-organized; the inner journey, on the other hand, consisted of crashing around in the brambles, startling birds and little animals.  (I think they might have been the Ox too!)  There were frequent moments of stepping back in surprise or shock, obliterating the evidence of the Ox.  Then, there were set-backs and dervish-like twirlings trying to find that next trace which, in my linearly-trained mind, would lead to the Ox.  But if the Ox knew “if this, then that,” it didn’t interpret that specific teaching as a linear equation to enlightenment.  It was a twisted, agonizing process of seeing, grasping, losing, craving, made tolerable only by the growing comfort of time on the cushion.  There, I discovered a lot of what we politely refer to as “meadow muffins” and, in my haste to get to the beast, set foot in a few piles.

I wish I knew then – but I’m glad I know now – that stepping into my personal bull-shit is the best indication that I’m close to my Ox nature!

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

108ZB goes on a spiritual quest.  Playing with the kanji strokes of “Buddha” lead to some doodles that melded with the idea of how these 108buddhas are a spiritual quest.  And that lead to the obvious: the 10 ox-herding pictures.

Bloggosphere teacher, Barry Briggs of Ox Herding, is the master of the Ox Quest so I submit the next 10 days with some anxiety and trepidation.  And just to increase the anxiety, I added some rules in manifesting these pictures.  The characters have to be represented by the lines of the kanji that make up the character “Buddha.”  That gave me 10 strokes to get the message across.  I allowed myself some embellishments to close the background; but these cannot be part of the main characters.  This series is not spontaneous and since that violated Rule #1 when I started 108buddhas, I convened the Parliament of Internal Artistic Critics for an emergency session.  Typically Canadian, we formed an unholy alliance with Dark Karma and repealled Rule #1 in favour of Rule #108: Do what is needed.

searching for the Ox

There are traces everywhere,
dark stains of twisted karma ~

dusty, heavy, dragging back.

The momentum of desire
pitches me forward,
falsely protected

by intellect but
steadied by the breath.

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Daido Loori’s Riding the Ox Home and John Cage’s Zen Ox-Herding Pictures are beautiful renditions of the Ox Herding quest.  Loori writes that we cannot start our spiritual quest until the question of our purpose in life arises.  There has to arise a self-shattering doubt which propels us into confusion and leaves us disoriented  about the relationship we have, through this life, with this world.

That moment came for me at a professional conference when I said something in public I thought was a flippant joke about someone and someone else responded, “That was nasty.”  It wasn’t just the words that shattered my concept of how the world works but the deep sadness in the tone I heard (I have no idea if the speaker felt this at all because she was a complete stranger to me).  Perhaps what feelings I thought were in her words were merely a resonance of what I felt.  I was standing in a crowd of people but in the second the words registered, I felt as if I had smashed full-speed into a wall of ancient stone built piece by piece of all my past unskillfulness in thought, word and action.  The way I thought the world operated was not the way, it seemed.  And I knew had to start over.

But that starting over didn’t happen for a number of years, which was good because it allowed me to accumulate more evidence of why I needed to journey into figuring out who and how I am meant to be in this life.  And, fortunately, it has happened several times since.

By the way, I’m making no claims that I will show myself fully realized by the end of these ten pictures; from what I gather of the first picture, I’m not sure I’m even in that frame yet!  It’s as much a mystery to me as it is to anyone else what text will flow from the art.  Or perhaps, there will be nothing much to say and we will just enjoy a sip of iced green tea and durian cookies together.

Thank you for practicing,

Genju