Absent Mare

“In his song “Ballad of the Absent Mare,” Leonard Cohen interprets the Ten Oxherding Pictures through the eyes of a western cowboy balladeer. In each country and during each time period in which Zen and Buddhism more broadly has spread, it has incorporated elements of the new cultures it encountered. In China, elements of Daoism can be found in Zen’s Buddha Nature concept, and Confucianism in its lineage system. Likewise, in America, Jack Kerouac made his Dharma Bums freight train hopping hobos, while J.D. Salinger created a modern Bodhisattva from New York City in the image of Holden Caulfield. Poet Gary Snyder wrote the “Smokey the Bear Sūtra,” equating a furry firefighter with Vairocana, the Great Sun Buddha, and singer-songwriter Cat Stevens made reference to the Ten Oxherding Pictures in the title of his album Catch a Bull at Four, before converting to Islam and changing his name to Yusuf Islam.

1. Searching for the Bull
In the pasture of this world, I endlessly push aside the tall grasses in search of the bull.
Following unnamed rivers, lost upon the interpenetrating paths of distant mountains,
My strength failing and my vitality exhausted, I cannot find the bull. I only hear the locusts chirring through the forest at night.

The Leonard Cohen beginning of the song, says:

Say a prayer for the cowboy, his mare’s run away
And he’ll walk til he finds her, his darling, his stray
but the river’s in flood and the roads are awash
and the bridges break up,
in the panic of loss.
And there’s nothing to follow, there’s nowhere to go
She’s gone like the summer, gone like the snow.
And the crickets are breaking, his heart with their song
as the day caves in
and the night is all wrong

In addition to the correlation Cohen draws between the horse and the ox, we might also speculate that he is hinting at the loss of a woman he hopes to regain; his love songs have been known to refer to separation and longing for reunion. Regardless of our interpretation of this part of the metaphor, certainly there is an element of the cowboy’s love for the mare in the song. The opening phrase, “Say a prayer,” sets a religious tone.

2. Discovering the Footprints

Along the riverbank under the trees, I discover footprints!
Even under the fragrant grass I see his prints.
Deep in remote mountains they are found.
These traces no more can be hidden than one’s nose, looking heavenward.

The corresponding Cohen audio says:

Did he dream, was it she who went galloping past
and bent down the fern, broke open the grass
and printed the mud with the iron and the gold
that he nailed to her feet,
when he was the lord
And although she goes grazing a minute away
he tracks her all night he tracks her all day
Oh blind to her presence except to compare
his injury here
with her punishment there

3. Perceiving the Bull

I hear the song of the nightingale.
The sun is warm, the wind is mild, willows are green along the shore,
Here no bull can hide!
What artist can draw that massive head, those majestic horns?

The corresponding part of the song says:

Then at home on a branch in the highest tree
a songbird sings out so suddenly
Ah the sun is warm and the soft winds ride
on the willow trees
by the river side
Oh the world is sweet the world is wide
and she’s there where the light and the darkness divide
and the steam’s coming off her she’s huge and she’s shy
and she steps on the moon
when she paws at the sky

4. Catching the Bull

I seize him with a terrific struggle.
His great will and power are inexhaustible.
He charges to the high plateau far above the cloud-mists,
On in an impenetrable ravine he stands.

The corresponding section of “Ballad of the Absent Mare” says:

And she comes to his hand but she’s not really tame
She longs to be lost he longs for the same
and she’ll bolt and she’ll plunge through the first open pass
to roll and to feed
in the sweet mountain grass
Or she’ll make a break for the high plateau
where there’s nothing above and there’s nothing below
and it’s time for the burden it’s time for the whip
Will she walk through the flame
Can he shoot from the hip

5. Taming the Bull

The whip and rope are necessary,
Else he might stray off down some dusty road.
Being well trained, he becomes naturally gentle.
Then, unfettered, he obeys his master.

The corresponding part of the song is:

So he binds himself to the galloping mare
and she binds herself to the rider there
and there is no space, but there’s left and right
and there is no time,
but there’s day and night

6. Riding the Bull, Returning Home

Mounting the bull, slowly I return homeward.
The voice of my flute intones through the evening.
Measuring with hand-beats the pulsating harmony, I direct the endless rhythm.
Whoever hears this melody will join me.

There does not seem to be an independent verse in the song that neatly corresponds to Oxherding picture number six. Instead, Cohen combines pictures six and seven into one verse, as shown below. We should also consider that he uses two verses each to describe pictures one through four, only one verse to describe picture five, and now only one verse for six and seven together. We might speculate that the changing number of corresponding verses indicates how the perception of time becomes more and more fine, until it comes to a complete stop in picture eight, below. In the sixth Oxherding picture, the aspirant’s struggle to tame the unruliness of mind, those waves that obscure the Mind-Ground beneath, has become effortless.

7. Bull Forgotten, Self remains

Astride the bull, I reach home.
I am serene. The bull too can rest.
The dawn has come. In blissful repose,
Within my thatched dwelling I have abandoned the whip and rope.

The corresponding part of the song is:

And he leans on her neck and he whispers low
“Whither thou goest, I will go”
And they turn as one and they head for the plain
No need for the whip
Ah, no need for the rein

The first two lines of Cohen’s stanza seem to refer to the previous Oxherding picture in that the cowboy rides the mare comfortably. In addition, Cohen adds, “Wither thou goest, I will go,” a reference to Book of Ruth in the King’s James Version of the Bible (Ruth 16–17), again tying the Zen message to the American and Jewish religious experiences and the mare to love for a woman. Cohen also wrote another song called “Wither Thou Goest.” When I think of that line in the context of the Ten Oxherding Pictures, I am reminded of the scene near the beginning of Narrow Road to the Deep Interior, when Bashō describes letting a farmer’s horse guide him to a destination that man could not discern. This seems to be the point in Cohen’s song as well—riding the mare but letting it lead, taming the mind so it can be experienced as untamed.

8. Both Bull and Self Forgotten

Whip, rope, person, and bull – all merge in No-Thing.
This heaven is so vast no message can stain it.
How may a snowflake exist in a raging fire?
Here are the footprints of the patriarchs.

We should strongly suspect that the reason there is no corresponding verse in the song is because number eight is the empty circle. This empty circle—also seen in the famous Zen enzo, incomplete circle—is highly significant in terms of awakening to Buddha Nature. Here, the perceived duality between ox and monk, mare and cowboy, and mind and the perceiver of mind, are all shown to have been misconceptions of the nature of reality, and vanish. Likewise, the verse is “empty” in that it is not provided.

We might also speculate that the idea behind this empty circle is the reason that the song is called “Ballad of the Absent Mare.” Listeners assume that the mare is absent in the sense that she has run away. However, it becomes clear, particularly at the end of the song, that in reality the mare is absent by virtue of being merged in No-Thing, as Kakuan puts it. In the same way, there is no monk, cowboy, singer, or listener; all are concepts dependent on the perception of a “self” and “other.” According to Buddhism, like all things, these are empty of self-existence. Basic Buddhist teachings say that all things consist of five elements (five skandhas) that constantly interact with one another, always coming into and going out of existence. That is to say, the person you are right now is not the person you were ten years ago, physically or mentally. The same is true from moment to moment. There is nothing that is not interacting with other elements; there is nothing that permanently exists. In this sense and in others, there are no individual separate beings and in fact no beings at all, since what we call a being has changed by the time we have named it. In this eighth stage of awakening the mind has stopped positing an ego-self that constantly judges experience as separate from itself. Thus the illusion of an ox and a monk disappears.

9. Return to the Origin, back to the source

Too many steps have been taken returning to the root and the source.
Better to have been blind and deaf from the beginning!
Dwelling in one’s true abode, unconcerned with that without –
The river flows tranquilly on and the flowers are red.

The corresponding lines of the song are:

Now the clasp of this union, who fastens it tight?
Who snaps it asunder the very next night?
Some say the rider, some say the mare
Or that love’s like the smoke
beyond all repair

10. Entering the Market place with Bliss-Bestowing Hands

Barefooted and naked of breast, I mingle with the people of the world.
My clothes are ragged and dust-laden, and I am ever blissful.
I use no magic to extend my life;
Now, before me, the dead trees become alive.

The end of the song:

But my darling says, “Leonard, just let it go by
That old silhouette on the great western sky”
So I pick out a tune and they move right along
and they’re gone like the smoke
and they’re gone like this song.

The content of the tenth picture is important in showing that a Bodhisattva returns to the ordinary world to help sentient beings on their own paths to realization. Likewise, in the song, the singer returns to ordinary life. This part of the ballad appears at first to be the most enigmatic once the content of the Ten Oxherding Pictures has been unpacked from the previous verses. Here we are suddenly introduced to two more characters that are neither the cowboy nor the mare, except perhaps metaphorically: Leonard, who has been revealed to be the one experiencing the vision of the cowboy and absent mare, and his darling, to whom it appears he has been relating all this.

The verse suggests that the cowboy and the horse were images the singer/Cohen had imagined in clouds or smoke in a western sky, which of course is fitting for the cowboy ballad and for bringing Zen into an American context. It might be understood that the silhouette in the sky is “old” in that is has been playing out over and over for millennia in various forms—such as the Ten Oxherding Pictures, the “Ballad of the Absent Mare,” and ordinary lives across continents.

Cohen’s imagery in this final verse is very fitting to Zen in two ways. First, there is the idea that we experience only provisional reality, that only Buddha Nature is ultimately real and unchanging. Many Buddhist writings, including the Lotus Sūtra, describe our experience of provisional reality as being like clouds, smoke, bubbles, a mirage, or as Cohen put it earlier in his song, a dream. The second way the last verse fits with Zen is that it expresses non-attachment in the phrase “just let it go by,” an idea that is actualized in the next phrase, “they’re gone like the smoke and they’re gone like this song.” Again, while “they” seems to refer to the cowboy and the mare, it also implies all duality and the struggle to realize non-duality.

It is worth noting that in reference to the cowboy, the second line of the song calls the mare “his darling, his stray,” whereas the end refers to “my darling.” This change reinforces the notion that the mare is a metaphor for a woman. Most important in this regard, the one by analogy who is the “darling”—who in essence tells the monk to “let it go by”—is the Laughing Buddha in the tenth Oxherding Picture. This connection strongly implies that “my darling” in the last line of Cohen’s song refers to Cohen’s own Zen master, who is, after all, to be considered within the tradition as a living Buddha.”

~ Ronald Green, Teaching Zen’s Ten Oxherding Pictures through Leonard Cohen’s “Ballad of the Absent Mare”