Awakening the OX

I originally started this Substack as a clear way to share my weekly dharma talks. Every Monday at 6P PT / 9P ET I host an online Zen gathering through the Zen Community of Oregon where I am one of the teachers.

The gathering begins with two twenty minute periods of meditation, followed by a Dharma Talk.

Dharma Talks are ways of connecting to the voice of the ancestors, the path of awakening that has been opened up and walked by real human beings over the course of millennia. Because our habitual minds tend towards confusion and distraction, we often need regular reminders about the path of practice.

In the Zen Buddhist tradition these reminders point us to Buddhahood. To our intrinsic Buddha nature, that is spacious, free, compassionate and infinitely creative.

This talk is the beginning of a series of talks on the Ten OX-Herding or Cow-Herding pictures. My teacher Chozen, Roshi would often remark that Zen practice is a practice without handrails. For how does one begin to measure or mark the infinite. And yet, there are states of mind we taste in our practice, and as we continue these states become more and more familiar and accessible.

This talk is an introduction to the Ten OX-Herding pictures as well as an introduction to how I will be exploring this teaching.

One invitation that is alive in the Zen school and in my personal teaching is that the metaphors that we use to describe Mind’s nature, can be entered directly. So here, in this teaching we are invited to meet the OX or the Cow. This is a symbol or metaphor of our true nature, our natural divinity.

Awakening the OX perhaps is a journey to the pre-Buddhist Minoan culture on the island of Crete, where humans performed rituals dressing as bulls to summon the Great Goddess who could give life or take it away.

But as always, more intimately awakening the OX is a journey of Self discovery. A revelation of what has always been here. Of course, as with any good teaching tool, the OX itself will be forgotten, as the functioning of Awakening lives on through us.

There are many great resources to view the Ten Ox-herding Pictures, the prose and commentary. Here are two that I share during this talk:

DT Suzuki

John Daido Loori, Roshi

Thank you for reading / listening.

I am getting over the flu, so you may notice that my voice is nasally and fatigued.

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