Searching for the Bull

Well known in the land of zen are the Ox Herding Pictures, a set of ten. They begin with the bull being lost and end with a happy soul returning to the market place. In between it gets rather messy, much like life itself. 

Various commentaries can be found to the pictures and one I have begins with a chapter heading "Searching for the Bull". 

Looking for the bull

The commentary begins:- The search for what? The bull has never been missing.

Thinking about this it seems to me that it opens to the question of theodicy, human suffering. Though "never missing", nevertheless for the bull to be "found", we must necessarily pass through all things. As W. H. Auden writes in "For the Time Being":-

For the garden is the only place there is, but you will not find it 

Until you have looked for it everywhere and found nowhere that is not a desert.

Meaning can therefore be found/implied in even the deepest suffering; though, as I see it, only if all eventually "find the bull".

A poem often accompanies the first Ox Herding Picture, the opening line of which is:- 

Alone in the vast wilderness, the herdsman searches for his bull in the tall grass. 

Which for me brings to mind the opening of Dante's "Divine Comedy":-

I found me in a gloomy wood, astray, gone from the path direct.

In a gloomy wood and gone astray (Gustave Dore)

East or West, it seems, sensitive souls reach the same impasse! 

Yet paths, ideas, creeds and beliefs, do diverge. While Dante moves inexorably towards the Heavenly Vision, he leaves behind the less fortunate, congealed into eternal states of pain. 

"Abandon hope all ye who enter here" indeed! 

Suffering is no longer redemptive, but punitive.

Such is "justice". 

While in the Ox Herding Pictures the final scene depicts the sage, bare chested and bare footed, returning to the market place with "bliss bestowing hands." All are found, and all is still on the move.

Back to the market place

"Without troubling himself to work miracles, suddenly dead trees break into bloom"

Some may prefer the Dante version.....

.... but each to their own.

I wonder how anything can reach a conclusion. I wonder just what is the image and what is the reality.

To whom would we bestow "bliss" within a "concluded" reality? 

Possibly the journey itself will always be home.

Spoiler Alert! 

At picture number eight both bull and searcher are "forgotten."

"Whip and rein, bull and man, are all gone and vanished" 

"When all worldly wanting dropped away, holiness too, lost its meaning."

(It seems to me that zen is not so much a transmission outside of words, more a transmission/communion of heart to heart, which can include words)