Seeing the Ox

“Seeing the Ox

Through sounds he makes an entry and comes to know their source. But it’s no different for each and every one of the six senses. In their every function, it is plainly present, like salt in water, or glue in paint. Raise your eyebrows–it is nothing other than yourself.

On the tree branch a nightingale sings, warm sun, soft wind, green willows on the bank. Now nowhere for it to hide, its majestic horns no artist could draw.

In the spring sun in the green willow strands, see its timeless form.
Finally, we have been able to see the ox. We have been looking for this ox. We have begun some training, full of explanations and ideas about how to do it. Finally, we encounter the traces, and following them we now see the ox. In this picture, however, it’s still only the rear end of the ox that has been seen. “Through sounds he makes an entry and comes to know their source.”

There is a story from China. The Sixth Patriarch’s disciple was Nangaku Ejo, whose disciple was Baso Doitsu, and his disciple was Hyakujo Ekai. It was Hyakujo Ekai who gave us all of the rules that we use today in our training. Without the rules he gave us, our practice would be chaotic and disorganized. In his elderly years, Hyakujo Ekai had a disciple named Kyogen Chikan. Kyogen was one of those disciples who could hear one and understand ten. Among the one thousand monks who were training with this teacher, Kyogen was one of the sharpest. When Hyakujo Ekai died, Kyogen Chikan went to train with Hyakujo’s senior disciple, his brother disciple, Isan Reiyu. Because Isan Reiyu and Kyogen Chikan had been monks together under the same teacher, they knew each other very well. Isan Reiyu said to Kyogen, “You are an excellent monk, but I do not want to hear your intellectualizations and your explanations. Before your mother and father were even born, what was it you knew? Say one word of this. If you cannot tell me this, then you should not be here.”

Kyogen tried everything he knew, but he was using not his own words but rather the thoughts and repeated ideas of others. Again and again, Isan Reiyu told him not to bring anything that was not his own. Two years went by, three years went by, more years passed. But Kyogen’s essence still did not manifest. Finally, he went to Isan and said, “I have nothing more to say. Won’t you please tell me the answer to this”? The teacher replied, “I could tell you, but that would be only my words, not your words. You have to know this from within yourself, not by hearing it from somebody else.”

Kyogen was desperate. He had been called the best student of his first teacher, and now he was found out to have no capability whatsoever. He decided he could never go into society like this but would spend the rest of his life cleaning a teacher’s grave. He found the grave of one of the disciples of the Sixth Patriarch, Nanyo Echu Kokushi, who had even become the emperor’s teacher. He spent two, three, four, five, six years cleaning this grave. Every single day he cleaned and did zazen, and always in his mind he was turning over this question and searching for that one word from before his parents were born. What could that be? He gave up on all thinking, all desires, all attachments, and just cleaned all day from morning until night. How clear and pure and quiet his mind must have become.

One day he was cleaning as usual, gathering leaves and various bits of debris that he had swept up and throwing them away out the back gate. This was his daily ritual. But this day, as he threw the leaves a stone that was mixed in with them hit a bamboo; at the sound of the bamboo being hit by the stone, he became that sound, and it was extending throughout the universe. He had not heard this from someone else. He was in deep great wonder and astonishment. He knew the answer to the question he had been working on, in this moment, in his purified mind. He jumped up in astonishment. He had met the ox directly. Beyond any ideas or dualistic experiences– philosophers call this the pure experience–he knew it from himself completely.

He heard this sound from a place beyond preconceived notions and experiences, from an unborn, fresh place. We are always so caught up in our past experiences that we are unable to experience this great wonder, this fresh-born amazement. Because we are trapped by our hard, fixed ideas, we sit to let go of them. This is why we have to sit–to let go of all of those preconceived notions, all of that clutter, everything that prevents us from being open to this wonder.

The energy that is fixed and hardened is suffocated and without freshness–to be in that state of mind in which everything is new and alive is what enlightenment or satori is. Every day is fresh, every day is new. For Kyogen it came through his ears, but it does not have to come through a particular sense. The Buddha saw the morning star. Here the ox is seen. Reiun Shigon saw the peach blossom blooming. Badabara Bodhisattva felt the bathwater on his skin, the warm bathwater, and was enlightened in the bath. We can always see, hear, smell, taste, and feel, so why do we not know this wonder? It’s because we have become anaesthetized by preconceived notions and fixed ideas.

Rinzai said that in this five-foot lump of red flesh there is a True Person of No Rank who is always coming and going in and out of the orifices. If you have not seen this True Person yet, see it now. Within this physical body that bleeds when it’s cut, that True Person of No Rank encounters the eyes and becomes seeing; it encounters the ears and becomes hearing; through the hands, it
becomes making something; through the feet, it becomes carrying our body. That True Person of No Rank, without any smell or shadow of a small self: if you have not realized that True Person, that true life energy, do it now. We all have the exact same eyes and ears and body and awareness. If you do not become fixed and hardened on some idea of a small self, you can always know this place which is fresh and new.

“But it is no different for each and every one of the six senses.” Buddha Nature is the name that is given, but our true nature is not something that is made up or held on to in our heads. It’s not just a name. It’s alive; it’s present; it’s real. As Bodhidharma said in his rules for doing zazen, you need to let go of all connections to the external world and let go of all concerns within and, not holding on to anything in your head, sit with your entire body. Zen is not something we have to be able to hold on to some idea about. It’s not about holding on to an idea of thinking nothing at all either, or an idea of not being moved around by anything–if we approach it in that way we are still beginners. It’s not to sit as if paralyzed either.

Rather, as it’s said in the phrase in the Diamond Sutra that the Sixth Patriarch heard and was awakened by, “residing in no place, the awakened mind arises.” Zen is not to think that we should not see, hear, or speak, but while seeing, hearing, and speaking to let everything go after we have perceived it. If we become caught by and attached to anything, our mind stops. Rather than thinking and becoming caught by various thoughts, we can be always new, always fresh. We must know this beyond any preconceived notion or idea or past experience; we must know only that flow of life energy.

In Buddhism the truth is always being likened to a mirror, which reflects everything but is not influenced by anything it is reflecting. It can also be likened to a canvas with a painting on it, or a chalkboard with writing on it, or a movie screen with a film being shown on it. People look at a painting, but they do not look at the canvas. They look at what is written on the chalkboard, but they do not look at the chalkboard. They see what is happening on a movie screen, but they do not look at the screen on which the movie is being shown. Our senses are the same. Our ears encounter a sound, and at that moment we are able to hear. The same is true of tasting a flavor. We encounter a food, and from that comes forth tasting. Zen is not about searching for a world of nothing at all. That will get us nowhere. That will not be of any use. Nor will being attached to everything that we encounter. “In their every function, it is plainly present, like salt in water, or glue in paint. Raise your eyebrows–it is nothing other than yourself.”

It is foolish to look at a canvas and its picture as two separate things, as it is foolish to look at a chalkboard and what is written on it as two separate things, or a move screen and what is showing on it as two separate things. They are not separate. As we sit here, if we look for our selves somewhere separated, how foolish that would be. We must dive into that which does the zazen, that which works, that which hears, that which sees, or we are foggy and hazy, and that is not it either. From the tops of our heads to the bottoms of our feet, we must become clear and transparent and taut, or our zazen is being done without meaning. We must let go of all preconceived notions and with that clarified mind see the stars and the green of the trees. If our mind is fuzzy and lax, we will never be able to perceive clearly; nor will we be able to perceive clearly if we sit with too much tension. We must always see with a fresh, clarified mind.

“On the tree branch a nightingale sings, warm sun, soft wind, green willows on the bank.” Filling our eyes, our ears, the bird’s song fills our whole body, the wind fills our whole body. We do a great MUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuu and try to put everything into it, but the harder we work, the greater the separation grows and the more confused we become about how to become one with that original essence.

There is an old story about a woodcutter who was cutting down a tree when he heard a bird with a beautiful voice singing nearby. As he finished cutting down the tree, this unusual bird, who could read his thoughts and speak to him, said, “Ah, ha! You’ve been intoxicated by my beautiful voice, I can tell.” The woodcutter was astonished and looked up, but there was no bird anywhere to be seen. Then he heard it say, “See, now you’re astonished, aren’t you?” The woodcutter thought, “I’ll catch that bird,” and immediately he heard the bird say, “So you’re going to try to catch me now.” The woodcutter saw the bird sitting on a branch in front of him and thought he might be able to put out his hand and catch it, but just as he began to reach for it, the bird flew to a higher branch. When he climbed the tree to reach the branch where the bird was, the bird flew to the next tree. When he ran down and climbed up that tree, the bird flew to the next tree. In this way, the bird kept the woodcutter chasing after him, teasing him the whole time. Finally, the woodcutter gave up and said, “This is a useless chase.” And he went back to cutting trees.

As soon as he did this, the bird said to him, “Now you’re going to ignore me, huh?” And he did indeed ignore the bird and just kept on cutting wood. And who knows why, but for some reason the woodcutter’s hatchet suddenly flew out of his hand and knocked the bird right into his hand. This bird is the bird of enlightenment. In Japanese, the word for bird is tori and the word for enlightenment is satori, so the bird in this story is the tori of satori, the bird of enlightenment. “Now nowhere for it to hide, its majestic horns no artist could draw.” People of the past also always said that you can draw a picture of a peach but you cannot taste the flavor of a peach from looking at its picture. When people hear a story about someone else’s experience, they then try to imitate how it was done. They lie down in a certain way, or they do something in a certain way to imitate another person’s realization. But those imitations can never be the real thing.

What has to be done is to let go of yourself completely. You must separate from that idea of a small self completely, or you will never be able to know the ox and see it for yourself. Here we have just barely had a glimpse of this ox. We have not really seen the whole thing yet. We have not made it our own yet. So while we may have a sense of what it’s like, we cannot use it yet; we cannot put it to use. We do not know this ox freely.

Take these words and do not just listen to them superficially but use them; do your practice with that mind of clarity until it becomes transparent from all parts of you. Take this essence and make it into a oneness in everything you are doing, whether you are sitting or standing or working; whatever you are doing, bring it into oneness, keep it all as one, without separation. Do that and keep that going all the time. Do not become caught on your own ideas of what you have understood up until now. If you still carry those around with you, you are a slave of your past experience. Buddhism is the life energy of this very moment, this immediate moment, separated from all the past moments. We must be in this immediate moment right now so that we do not waste this precious opportunity of doing sesshin here together.”

~ Shodo Harada, Commentary on Ten Oxherding Pictures