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BUDDHISM
AND
JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY
BY
J. Marvin
Spiegelman, Ph.D.
and
Mokusen Miyuki, Ph.D.
1985
FALCON PRESS
PHOENIX, ARIZONA, U.S.A.
Copyright
@ 1985 by J. Marvin
Spiegelman and Mokusen Miyuki
J. Marvin Spiegelman (1926-) has a Ph.D. from
U.C.L.A. and is a Diplomate in clinical psychology, American Board of
Professional Psychology. He is a graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich,
Switzerland. He has taught at U.C.L.A., U.S.C. and the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem. He has a private practice as a Jungian analyst in Studio City,
California.
Mokusen Miyuki holds a B.A. degree in
Eastern Religions from the University of Tokyo, an M.A. degree in Western
Philosophy from U.C.L.A. and a Ph.D. in Asian Studies from Claremont Colleges.
He is a graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland. He is a
professor at California State University at Northridge, practices as a Jungian
analyst in the Los Angeles area and is a Buddhist Priest.
http://korat.ibc.ac.th/files/private/Buddhism%20and%20Jungian%20Psychology.pdf
Part Two
THE OXHERDING PICTURES
OF ZEN BUDDHISM
Self-Realization in the Ten Oxherding Pictures
- by Mokusen Miyuki,
pp. 29-42.
The Ten Oxherding Pictures of Zen Buddhism: A Commentary
- by J. Marvin Spiegelman,
pp. 43-87.
THE RONIN: A Fictional Portrayal of the Oxherding Series
- by J. Marvin Spiegelman,
pp. 89-103.
SELF-REALIZATION
IN THE TEN
OXHERDING PICTURES
By Mokusen Miyuki
In my
paper entitled, "A Jungian Approach to the Pure Land
Practice
of Nien-fo." I
challenged the prevailing psychological view
of
Eastern religions as aiming at the "dissolution," or at the least
the
"depotentiation," of the ego.1 I argued that the Pure Land
Buddhist
practice of nien-fo (the
mental andlor verbal recitation of
Amitabha's
name), for example, aids the individual to strengthen,
rather
than dissolve, the ego through the integration of unconscious
contents.
In this paper, I would like to further support this point
by
examining the Zen tradition's Oxherding
Pictures.2
These pictures
are
products of the Zen "mind" and express in an art form the
experience
of satori or Zen enlightenment. Since
enlightenment is
a
psychological reality par excellence, these
pictures can be analyzed
by
employing Jungian methodology and his conceptual framework,
and by
viewing them as portraying what C.G. Jung
calls "the
individuation
process."
Although
only a few sets of the Oxherding
Pictures exist today, in
the
past there must have been several sets of pictures - and those
of
various numbers. The variety of sets can be inferred from the
fact
that there are records of differing "verses" which accompany
such
pictures.3 The Zen scholar D.T. Suzuki has made two sets of
the Ten Oxherding Pictures which
are well known in the West:
namely,
the set whose accompanying ten Prefaces
and Verses were
written
by the twelfth century Zen master Kuo-an (Kaku-an in
Japanese)
and another earlier version to which the Zen master
Pu-ming
wrote the ten accompanying Verses.4 The version by
Kuo-an
has enjoyed wide acceptance in Japan while the one by
Pu-ming
was popular in China.5
Pu-ming's
Ten Oxherding Pictures portray a wild, black ox that
becomes
increasingly white as the pictures proceed. These pictures
are
entitled: (1) Undisciplined, (2) Discipline Begun, (3) In Harness,
(4)
Faced Round, (5) Tamed, (6) Unimpeded, (7) Laissez Faire, (8) All
forgotten,
(9) The Solitary Moon, and (10) Both Vanished.
Evidently,
the emphasis in these pictures is placed upon the
gradual
achievement of satori (Zen enlightenment), which is
shown
by the progressive whitening of the black ox. The concept
of
whitening that which is black is based on the Buddhist doctrine
of
tathagatagarbha, the realization of the Buddha-nature, or the
genuine
self, which is obscured by the dark side of the personality.
According
to Ts'u-yuan, who wrote the Preface to Kuo-an's
version,
Kuo-an was not satisfied with the idea of a gradual
whitening
of the ox, nor with the gradual, progressive liberation
of the
Buddha-nature; thus, he presented his experience of satori in
a
different manner. His pictures are entitled: (1) Searching
for the
Ox, (2)
Seeing the Traces, (3) Seeing the Ox, (4) Catching the Ox,
(5)
Herding the Ox, (6) Coming Home on the Ox's Back, (7) The
Ox
Forgotten, (8) The Ox and the Man Both Forgotten, (9)
Returning
to the Origin, Back to the Source, and (10) Entering the
City
with Bliss-bestowing Hands. The notion expressed in these
pictures
is the sudden gain or loss of one's genuine self, as
symbolized
by the ox.6
The
Oxherding Pictures have also been referred to as the Mind-ox
Pictures,
thus indicating that the ox, or the genuine self, in the
picture
represents the Zen concept of "mind."
Buddhism,
the term "hsin," "mind," which also refers to the
"heart"
or essence, has been used interchangeably with the term
II hsing,"
which means nature or essence. Accordingly, in Zen the
psychic
reality connected with the word"mind is that of satori in
the
sense of "seeing one's own natureJ'(chien-hsing). A famous Zen
tenet
illustrates this connection:
A
special transmission outside the scriptures,
Not
depending upon letters,
Pointing
directly to the Mind (literally "human mind")
See into
Nature itself and attain Buddhahood.8
In this
tenet the words"mind," "nature," and "Buddhahood are
all
used to express different aspects of one and the same reality;
namely,
satori.
The
view of satori implied in the pictures of both Pu-ming and
Kuo-an
is to be understood in terms of the doctrine of tathagatagarbha,
or
realization of the Buddha-nature. This doctrine assures the
possibility
of universal enlightenment and has become basic to the
so-called
"sinified Buddhism," such as Hua-yen, T'ien-tai, Ch'an
(Zen in
Japanese), or Ch'ing-t'u (Pure Land). For instance, Chihyen
(602-
viewed
the Buddha-nature as having a tripartite character: (1) the
Buddha-nature
itself, the genuine essence which is universally
ever-present
in all beings, although it is in a state of dark
ignorance
and passion, obscured and defiled; (2) the Buddhanature
as the
driving force, (yin-chu) or the fundamental urge to
realize
itself through the practice of prajna (wisdom) and samadhi
(concentration);
and (3) the Buddha-nature as perfectly
realized
through
practice.9 In Zen, as mentioned above, both terms,
"mind"
and "nature" are used interchangeably in designating the
Buddha-nature.
Hence, the Zen concept of "mind refers to
something
quite different from the Western concept of the word.
Jung
was well aware of the fact that the Eastern concept of
"mind"
is radically different from that in the West. He states; "In
the
West, 'mind' is more or less equated with consciousness,
whereas
in the East the word 'mind' is closer to what the West
refers
to as the unconscious."10
Jung seems to imply here that in
the
East the word "mind" designates what he means by the
"psyche,"
or the psychological process which includes both conscious
and
unconscious. Were this so, the Zen concept of mind could be
taken
as equivalent to Jung's concept of the total psyche, or the
Self.
Jung
explains the relationship of consciousness to the unconscious
as follows:
Consciousness,
no matter how extensive it may be, must
always
remain the smaller circle within the greater circle of
the
unconscious, an island surrounded by the sea; and like the
sea
itself, the unconscious yields an endless and self-replenishing
abundance
of living creatures, a wealth beyond our fathoming.11
From
this viewpoint, then, the Oxherding Pictures can be understood
as
depicting the attempt of the oxherd, or the ego, to creatively
relate
itself to the inexhaustible treasure of the "mind-ox," or the
unconscious.
In Kuo-an's version, however, this confrontation of
the ego
with the unconscious ceases with the seventh picture
wherein
an "individuated man" is portrayed. Accordingly, the last
three
pictures by Kuo-an can be taken as describing the life of the
genuine
man, or the individuated ego, working in the service of
the
Self in and through common, daily activities.
In
writing about individuation, Jung states: "Individuation
means
becoming a single, homogeneous being, and, in so far as
'individuality'
embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable
uniqueness,
it also implies becoming one's own self. We could
therefore
translate individuation as 'coming to selfhood' or 'Self-
realization.' "12 The German term Selbstverwirklichung, which
is
translated
here as "self-realization" in English, indicates the
psychological
urge of the Self to realize itself - the
Self being the
center
and the whole circumference embracing both conscious
and
unconscious psyche. This point is clarified by Edward F.
Edinger
when he states: "Individuation seems to be the innate
urge of
life to realize itself consciously. The transpersonal life
energy
in the process of self-unfolding uses human consciousness,
a
product of itself, as an instrument for its own self realization."13
According
to Jung, therefore, individuation begins with the
innate
urge of the Self for realization, regardless of the conscious
will or
external situation. To become "a single, homogenous
being"
is not something the ego can create at will. Being driven by
the
Self's urge, it becomes possible for the ego, the center of the
conscious
personality, to evolve. Jung states:
"The ego stands to the self as the
moved to the mover, or as
object to subject, because the determining
factors which
radiate out from the self surround the ego
on all sides and are
therefore supraordinate to it. The self,
like the unconscious, is
an a priori existent out of which the ego evolves. It is, so to
speak, an unconscious prefiguation of the
ego. It is not I who
create myself, rdther I happen to
myself."14
This
fundamental urge of self realization is basic to the creative
life of
the individual as well exemplified in Jung's Memories, Dreams,
Reflections
which begins with the following statement:
"My life is a story of the
self-realization of the unconscious.
Everything in the unconscious seeks outward
manifestation,
and the personality too desires to evolve
out of its unconscious
condition and to experience itself as a
whole."15
The
innate urge for self-realization has been designated in
Buddhism
as that aspect of the Buddha-nature which, to use
Chih-yen's
conception, is manifested as the driving force to realize
itself.
The Buddha-nature is always present as Kuo-an states in
his Preface
to the first picture: "The beast has never gone away, and
what is
the use of searching for him" (p. 129). In
Kuo-an's version,
the
eternal presence of the Buddha-nature as the Self's urge to
realize
itself is symbolized by the circle in which each of the ten
pictures
are depicted. For, the circle, which conveys the idea of the
non-beginning
and non-ending quality of eternity, represents the
ever-presence
of the Buddha-nature in which Zen practice takes
place.
Once
the innate urge of the Self to realize itself is activated, the
Self
relentlessly imposes on the ego the task of integrating the
dark
side of the psyche, or the unconscious. For as "the smaller
circle
within the greater circle of the unconscious,"16 the ego is
constantly
conditioned by the Self as the determining factor for its
existence
and development. Since the Self is the paradoxical
totality
in which the opposites such as conscious and unconscious,
light
and darkness, good and evil, are united, there is no conscious
realization
of totality without integration of the opposites. Jung
states:
"Whenever the archetype of the self predominates, the
inevitable
psychological consequence is a state of conflict . . . and
man
must suffer from the opposite of his intention for the sake of
completeness."17
The ego, thus endangered by the demand of the
Self's
urge to realize itself, is depicted in Pu-ming's version of the
Oxherding
Pictures by the gradual process of whitening, that is, the
depotentiating
and integrating the wild black ox as the symbol of
the
overwhelming energy of the unconscious.
Self-realization,
or the ego's encounter of the archetype of the
Self,
is not a neutral experience. As a numinous experience, it
exercises
a powerful influence on the shaping or reshaping of
conscious
contents. Jung states:
. . .the archetypes have, when they
appear, a distinctly
numinous
character which can only be described as "spiritual,"
if
"magical" is too strong a word. Consequently this phenomenon
is of
the utmost significance for the psychology of religion. In
its
effects it is anything but unambiguous. It can be healing or
destructive,
but never indifferent, provided of course that it
has
attained a certain degree of clarity.18
Edward
F. Edinger characterized the development of the ego in
its
confrontation with the Self as a circular process of alternating
ego-Self
separation and ego-Self union. He states: "Indeed, this
cyclic
(or better, spiral) formula seems to express the basic process
of
psychological development from birth to death."
manner,
the progressive differentiation of the conscious life takes
place
continually throughout life as the result of conscious
assimilation
of the unconscious contents, or the enrichment of
consciousness
by the integration of the unconscious. The idea of
the
progressive enrichment of the conscious life is evidently
depicted
by Pu-ming, as mentioned above, by the gradual process
of
whitening, or integrating, the wild black ox, or the unconscious.
It is also
indicated by Kuo-an in the tenth picture of his version of
the
Oxherding Pictures. In this picture"Entering the City with Blissbestowing
Hands,"
the scene of an old man meeting a young boy in
the
market place is portrayed, showing thus that enrichment of
conscious
life in and through common activities, such as meeting
or
greeting people on the street. With this last picture, the
development
of the ego reverts to ordinary life depicted in the first
picture
but on a richer level of consciousness.
Psychologically
speaking, the circle symbolizes the temenos, the
magic
circle, or the protective function of the Self. The ego
consciousness,
as mentioned above, constantly faces the danger of
being
assimilated by the menacing energy of the unconscious. If it
is to
resist assimilation and be protected from the danger of
fragmentation
or disintegration, it is of prime importance for the
ego to
be strengthened by integrating the unconscious contents.
In
self-realization, the Self, which is the paradoxical totality,
provides
the ego with the strength and stability for its development
while
it simultaneously imposes on the ego the task of integrating
the
dark side of the personality. The protective function of the
Self is
indicated, in Kuo-an's version of the Oxherding Pictures, by the
circle
in which each of the ten pictures are depicted, representing
thus
the ever-presence of the Buddha-nature, or the Self, which
provides
the practitioner with strength and stability. The square
in
which Pu-ming portrayed each of the ten pictures in his version
can
also be taken as showing the utmost importance of the
integration
of the unconscious into consciouness, being supported
by the
Self's protective function.
In Zen
practice, the archetype of the Self is projected onto the
master
as the ideal self-image; hence, the encounter of the ego
with
the Self takes place, as projected on the master-disciple
relationship.
Accordingly, Zen emphasizes the importance of
meeting
the "right" master for the disciple in seeking for a genuine
realization
of satori. The encouragement as well as the admonition
of the
master provides the disciple with the temenos within which
the
latter's psychological security is gained. Being thus protected
from an
unconscious outburst and disintegration, the disciple can
attempt
to creatively relate himself to the treasure house of the
Buddha-nature
or the unconscious.
Jung
has observed that in the numinous experience, or the
confrontation
with the Self, mandala symbolism often emerges in
the
manifested unconscious materials, such as dreams, fantasies,
psychic
episodes, myths, fairytales, and such religious depictions
as the Oxherding Pictures.
According
to Jung, a mandala is a symmetrical structure
consisting
of ternary or quaternary combinations which are
concentrically
arranged. The ternary combinations symbolize the
dynamic
process of development or growth, whereas the quaternay
configurations
represent a static structual wholeness, or completion.
20
Jung's observation about the combination of the numbers
three
and four can be seen in the first seven pictures in Kuo-an's
Ten Oxherding Pictures. Were it
possible for us to understand the
third
picture, "Seeing the Ox," as representing the Zen "goal" of
"seeing
into Nature itself,"2' then, the fourth picture, "Catching
the
Ox," can be taken as representing attained wholeness or
completion.
Since self-realization is cyclic or spiral, as symbolized
by the
empty circle, the achieved totality is both the end and the
beginning.
Thus, as soon as the fourth state is realized, a new
struggle
begins on a higher level of consciousness. The new
process
thus initiated in the fourth picture reaches its culmination
in the
sixth picture, with the seventh picture, as the fourth of this
second
series, depicting the completion of the second ternary
process.
Therefore, in the first seven pictures, we can observe two
sets of
processes: the process from the first to the third picture
with
the fourth as the completion, and the process from the
fourth
to the sixth picture with the seventh as a second completion.
Since
the number seven comprises the union and totality of the
ternary
process and the quaternary completion, the seventh
picture
can be taken as portraying a final accomplishment.
The
view that the seventh picture of Kuo-an's version is
symbolic
of the completion of the process is supported by the title,
"The
Ox Forgotten, Leaving the Man Alone." In the preceding
pictures,
individuation or self-realization - in
terms of the
dialectical
confrontation of the ego (the oxherd) and the Self (the
ox) - has led the individual to experience a
transformation of
personality
symbolized as "the Man." Kuo-an states in his Verse:
"Where
Lo! the ox is no more [in Sanskrit, literally"emptied1; the
man
alone sits serenely" (p. 132). Thus,
the ox, the Self, has
"emptied
itself to become the "man." With this seventh picture,
the
oxherding scenes cease and the "man" is depicted instead of
the ox.
In Pu-ming's version, this individuated man is portrayed in
the
ninth picture, entitled "The Solitary Moon."
In
Kuo-an's Ten Oxherding Pictures, therefore, satori
as the ongoing
process
is depicted as three sets of processes; namely, the
initial
process from the first to the third picture with the fourth as
the completion;
the continuing process from the fourth to the
sixth
picture with the seventh as a second completion, which is
followed
by the life of the "individuated ego," or the "Selfcentered
ego,"
the ego which functions in the service of the Self,
portrayed
from the eighth to the tenth pictures. This third process
reverts
to the first picture as a third completion, returning thus to
the
"beginning" on a different level of consciousness.
The
genuine "man" in the seventh stage must face, and struggle
with another
serious problem, or duhkha
("dis-ease"), precisely
because
this is the final state of achievement for the ego that has
attempted
conscious assimilation of unconscious contents. At this
stage,
individuation as the confrontation of the ego with the Self
ceases
as such; for, as far as the ego is concerned, there are no
resources
to draw upon in order to affect any change regarding
the
realization of the next stage. This stage can manifest as the
perilous
state of psychic stagnation against which it is said that the
ego has
no means to cope. This danger of psychic stagnation has
been
recognized in Buddhism and designated ast'the danger of the
Bodhisattva,
or [of] the seeker for the ultimate enlightenment
sinking
into sunyata, or "emptiness."
According
to the Dasabhumi-sutra, the
"Sutra of the Ten 'Stages,' "
which
describes the ten stages of the Bodhisattva's spiritual
progress,
the Bodhissattva faces the danger of "sinking into
sunyata,"
especially when he arrives at the seventh stage called the
"Far-going"
which follows the realization of the truth of "Interdependent
Origination"
at the sixth stage.22 Since no means is
available
for the ego to overcome this psychic danger, the leap from
this state
to the next is no longer felt as an activity of the ego. Thus
the
Dasabhumi-sutra metaphorically speaks of the transition from
the
seventh stage, "Far-going," to the eighth, "Immovable," as
follows:
A sleeping man sees himself in a dream trying desperately
to
cross a raging torrent and to reach the yonder shore. His
hopeless
attempt awakens him. Once awakened, he finds himself
free
from all dis-ease (duhkhas) of worry, despair, frustration, or
agony.
The sutra describes this experience of satori, or awakening as
"without
merits" (anabhogatas).2~T he phrase "without merits"
refers
to the psychological condition wherein self-realization
takes
place so as the ego comes to function in an "ex-centric''
manner
in the service of the Self. Jung refers to this psychological
state
as"an ego-less mental condition," "consciousness without
an
ego,"
or the like, which is also expressed by St. Paul as the state in
which
"It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me"
(Galatians
2:20).24 The
Dasabhumi-sutra maintains, therefore, that
the
practice of the ten paramitas, or "perfections," in this eighth
stage - as well as the last two stages - is carried out in and
through
the realization of the Buddha's wisdom and compassion.
In
other words, in these three last stages, the Bodhisattva is in the
service
of, and in perfect unison with, the spontaneous manifestation
of the
activity of the Buddha's wisdom and compassion. The
expression"without
merits"designates this
Self-centric"functioning
of the
psyche in self-realization.25
In the
eigth picture, ther'Self-centric" functioning of the psyche
is
symbolized by the empty circle. As mentioned above, the circle
in
which each of the ten pictures is portrayed represents the
ever-present
activity of the Buddha-nature, or the Self in which
Zen
practice is pursued. Therefore, ther'empty circ1e"of the eighth
picture
can be taken as depicting the fully manifested activity of
the
Buddha-nature, or the Self, in the conscious life of the
practitioner
whose ego functions in the service of the Self. This is
to say,
in this "Self-centric" condition of the psyche, the individual
experiences
the paradoxical state-process of simultaneous occurrence
of
emptying-fulfilling, or negating-affirming, in regard to the
psychological
life. The ego is emptied by the very act of the Self
realizing,
or fulfilling, its urge. To put it differently, in facing the
emptying
activity of the Self's urge, the ego is forced endlessly and
relentlessly
to sacrifice whatever it has achieved. Yet this sacrifice
of the
ego is, at the same time, the fulfillment of the urge of the
Self,
or the genuine man.
Accordingly,
this ego-sacrifice in the sense of Self-fulfillment
must
not be confused with ego-dissolution or ego-depotentiation.
On the
contrary, the integrated ego is strong and flexible enough
to
develop the attitude of listening in order to function harmoniously
with
the Self. The ego thus strengthened can function in unison
with,
and in the service of the Self. Therefore, the word
"forgotten"
used in Kuo-an's title, "The Ox and the Man both
Forgotten,"
designates the emptying activity of the Buddhanature,
or the
Self, which is supraordinate to the function of the
ego.
Hence, once the "Self-centric" functioning of the psyche
takes
place, thenego-centric" functioning of the psyche is"forgotten"
or has
disappeared. What is overcome is not the ego itself but the
function
of the ego which is to be characterised as "ego-centric." In
Buddhism
the term "ego-centric" is used to describe the ego's
appropriating
orientation which is conditioned by the darkness or
ignorance
and the egoistic passion of defilement and which,
accordingly,
obscures the genuine activity of the Buddha-nature.
In the
Taoist tradition, the word"forgotten"(wang) has been used
synonymously
with wu-wei, "non-doing" or "letting something
be,"
or tsu-jan, "naturalness" or "being through itself." Therefore,
the
word "forgotten" indicates the psychological condition of
"being
emptied (kung, sunyata) wherein the ego is opened to the
service
of the activity of the Self, the matrix of life.
The
last two pictures of Kuo-an's version continue to describe
the
"Self-centric" functioning of the psyche. For the individuated
ego, or
the ego functioning in the service of the Self, neither the
human
world nor the natural world are experienced as alien to
itself.
Both nature and human activity become authentic to the
genuine
man. He experiences both as the Buddha-nature realizing
itself
in different modalities. Psychologically viewed, the experience
of the
Buddha-nature, or the Self, in nature and human relationships
can be
understood as paralleling the archetype of the Self which is
sometimes
associated with synchronistic or parapsychological
events.
In the Preface to the ninth picture, "Returning to the
Origin,
Back to the Source," Kuo-an states: "From the very
beginning,
pure and immaculate, the man has never been affected
by
defilement" (p. 133). This "original so-ness" refers to the
universal
presence of the activity of the Buddha-nature, or the
Self,
which realizes itself in and through the receptive, flexible
ego.
The same idea of "natura1ness"is also referred to in the last
line of
Kuo-an's Verse: "Behold the streams flowing whither
nobody
knows; and the flowers vividly red - for
whom are they?"
(p.
134). This verse can be translated literally as follows: "The
stream
flows on its own accord, and the flower is red on its own
accord."
The Chinese term tsu, "of its own accord," is used as a
compound,
tsu-jan, in Taoist thought, meaning "naturalness,"
occurring
as the creative spontaneity of nature, within and
without.
In other words, tsu-jan can be taken psychologically as the
living
reality of self-realization, or the creative urge of the Self
manifesting
itself in nature.
The
living reality of the Self is also experienced in human affairs
as
interpersonal relationships. This is the theme of the last
picture,
in Kuo-an's version entitledr'Entering the City with Blissbestowing
Hands."
A common,
everyday occurrence is portrayed
in
which a young man is meeting an old man in the market place. In
his
Preface, Kuo-an states: "Carrying a gourd he [the old man] goes
into
the market, leaning against a staff he comes home. He is
found
in company with wine-bibbers and butchers, he and they
are all
converted into Buddhas" (p. 134).
It
should be noted here that the old man depicted in the picture
has a
belly protruding like that of the so-called laughing Buddha.
D.T.
Suzuki interprets this emphasis on the belly as showing the
significance
of "diaphragmatic thinking," or "a sort of 'thinking'
which
is done with the whole body or the whole 'person."'26 This
man
embodies what Lin-chi (d. 866) calls "the total action of total
being."
makes
all sorts of friends as a manifested activity of sunyata, which
is symbolized
by the gourd he carries. In other words, this man is
the
genuine man in and through whom self-realization or
emptyinglfulfilling
activity of the Buddha-nature, takes place.
Tsu-te,
the author of the Six Oxherding Pictures, depicts in the last,
sixth,
picture the life of the genuine man, or the Self, as a person
who can
function as a total being, or the Self, by playfully
assuming
any samsaric form of existence, depending on the
circumstances
in which he finds himself.28 This playfulness is,
psychologicalIy
understood, "an ego-less" or the "Self-centric"
condition
of the psyche wherein self-realization takes place. In
Buddhism,
it is the play of the Bodhisattva who, out of selfless
compassion,
mingles with sentient beings in suffering in order to
liberate
them. In this manner, this last picture merges with the
first
picture on a different level of consciousness.
Psychologically,
the Oxherding Pictures can be taken as portraying
in an
art form what Jung calls individuation. Our study, employing
Jung's
concepts and methodology, has afforded us a psychological
understanding
of Zen satori (enlightenment) in terms of selfrealization,
or the
urge of the Self to realize itself. The essential
feature
of satori does not consist in ego-transcendence or egonegation,
but
rather in a life-long process which demands that the
ego
make ceaseless efforts towards the integration of the unconscious
contents.
The ego thus enriched and strengthened through
the
assimilation of the unconscious is freed from "egocentric"
ways of
functioning, which are conditioned by the darkness of
ignorance
and passion. Consequently, the ego can attain an
attitude
which allows it to function in an "ex-centric" manner in
perfect
unison with, and in the service of, the Self. This state can
be
designated as "Self-centric." Lin chi calls it "the total action
of
the
total being," or the Self realizing itself in its totality.
REFERENCES
1. J. Jacobi,
The Way of Individuation, trans.
R.F.C. Hull (New
York:
Harcourt, Brace & World,
Inc., 1967), p. 72. J. Henderson,
"The
Jungian Orientation to Eastern Religionr'(taped lecture. Los
Angeles:
C.G. Jung Institute, 1975). See M. Miyuki, "A Jungian
Approach
to the Pure Land Practice of Nien-fo,"
The Journal of
Analytical Psychology (London:
The Society of Analytical Psychology),
Vol.
24, no. 3 (July 1980), pp. 265-274.
2. This
article is a further elaboration of the paper entitled
"Selbstverwirklichung in the
Ten Oxherding Pictures," presented at
the
Eighth International Congress of International Association
for
Analytical Psychology. San Francisco. September, 1980.
3. Various
numbers of the Verses which
accompany The
Oxherding Pictures are
found in the Zoku zokyo as
follows: Kuo-an's
Prefaces and Verses to The Ten Oxherding Pictures (1. 2, 113, pp.
459a-
406band
1.2.116, pp. 489a-b); Pu-ming's Verses
to The Ten Oxherding
Pictures (1. 2. 113,
pp. 461a-462a), which are followed by those of
many
other masters who also wrote their Verses
to accompany the
pictures
used by Pu-ming. Hence, the popularity of Pu-ming's
version
is undeniable. The last of these masters is Chu-che, who
also
wrote the ten verses to The White O x
Pictures (1. 2. 113, pp.
470b-471a).
There are also two other masters' Verses
to The
Oxherding Pictures; namely,
the Verses for The Six Oxherding Pictures,
composed
by Tsu-te Hui-hui of the twelfth century (1.2.116, pp.
489b-490a)
and the Verses for The Four Oxherding Pictures (1. 2. 137,
pp.
210a-b) by Hsueh-ting, a contemporary of Kuo-an. These
different
Verses, composed by the five Zen
Masters, to The
Oxherding Pictures of
various numbers are translated into English by
Zenkei
Shibayama. See The Zen Oxherding
Pictures. Commentaries
by
Zenkei Shibayama and Paintings by Gyokusei Jikihara (Osaka:
Sogensha,
1975). For an English translation and exposition of The
Six Oxherding Pictures, see Z.
Shibayama, The Six Oxherding
Pictures,
trans.
Sumiko Kudo (Kyoto?): The Nissha Printing Co., Ltd. No Date).
4. For
the English translation of Kuo-an's and Pu-ming's texts,
I have
used D.T. Suzuki's translation in his Manual
of Zen Buddhism
(London:
Rider and Company, 1950), pp. 127-144. Suzuki's
translation
of Kuo-an's text with his discussion is also found in his
article,
"The Awakening of a New Consciousness in Zen," in Man
and Transformation. Bollingen
Series xxx 5 (New York: Pantheon
Books,
1964), pp. 179-202. For another translation and discussion
of
Kuo-an's version, see M.H. Treavor, tr. The Ox
and His Herdsman:
A Chinese
Zen Text (Tokyo: Hoduseido Press, 1969).
5.
Yanagida Seizan,"Ni-hon Zen no toku-shoku" (Characteristics
of
Japanese Zen), in Ogisu Jundo, ed., Zen to ni-hon buk-ka no sho
mon-dui
(Problems of Zen and Japanese Culture) (Kyoto, Heirakuji
shoten,
1969), pp. 79-84.
6. Zoku
zokyo 1. 2. 113, p. 459a.
7. Z.
Shibayama, The Six Oxherding Pictures, pp. 3-4.
8. See
D.T. Suzuki, Studies in Zen (London: Rider and Company,
1955)~p
. 48.
9. Chih-yen,
Hua-yen ching K'ung-mu chang (The Essentials of the
Hua-yen
Sutra), Taisho 45, p. 549b-c.
Psychology
and Religion: West and East. The Collected Works of C. G. lung
(hereafter
abridged as CW) 11 (New York: Pantheon Books, Inc.,
1958),
par. 774.
13. E.F. Edinger,
Ego and Archetype (Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin
Books,
Inc., 1973), p. 104.
11,
par. 391.
by
Aniela Jaffe: Trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York:
Pantheon
Books, 1961), p. 3.
16. See
footnote 11 above.
Dynamics
of the Psyche, CW 8, par. 405.
19.
Edward F. Edinger, Ego and Archetype, p. 5.
20.
Ibid., p. 188. For a discussion on the mandala symbolism of
the
ternary process and quaternary completion in the major
teachings
of Buddhism, see M. Miyuki, "The Ideational Content of
the
Buddha's Enlightenment as Selbstverwirklichung" (see present
volume).
21. See
D.T. Suzuki, Studies in Zen, p. 48.
22. The
Dasabhumisvaro nama mahayanasutram, Edited Pyuko Kindo
(Tokyo:
The Daijyo Bukkyo Kenkyu-kai, 1936), p. 119. The first
seven
stages are the stages in which the Bodhisattva is said not to
be
completely free from klesa or defilement. The finality of the
Bodhisattva's
realization in the eighth stage is also suggested by
its
name, i.e., "Immovable (acala), which indicates that the Bodhisattva
firmly
establishes himself in Buddha's wisdom and compassion.
23.
Ibid., p. 135.
24. See
C.G. Jung, "On 'The Tibetan Book of the Great
Liberation'."
CW 11, par 744. Also see C.G. Jung's "Foreword to
'Introduction
to Zen Buddhism'." CW, par. 890.
25. The
ninth stage is called "Excellent Wisdom" (sadhumati). At
this
stage the Bodhisattva attains the four wisdoms of nonhinderances
by
which he can preach the profound dharma of the
Buddha.
The tenth stage is called "Dharma-Cloud" (dharma-magha).
At this
stage of the final realization, the Bodhisattva bestows
Buddha's
wisdom and compassion, or an abundance of dharma like
rain on
all sentient beings in order to liberate them from the
samsaric
existence of suffering and sorrow.
26.
D.T. Suzuki, "The Awakening of a New Consciousness in
Zen,"
in Man and Transformation, p. 201.
27.
Lin-chi, Chen-chou Lin-chi Hui-chao ch'an-shih y-lu (The Dialogues
of the
Zen Master Lin-chi Hui-chao), Taisho 47, p. 501b.
28. See Z. Shibayama, The Six Oxherding Pictures,
pp. 44.
THE OXHERDING PICTURES
OF ZEN BUDDHISM:
A Commentary
By J. Marvin Spiegelman
Preliminary
When I
first happened upon the Ten Oxherding Pictures, in
Manual
of Zen Buddhism by D.T. Suzuki
(1960), it was as if I had
found a
great treasure, a visual representation of the process of
individuation
in succinct, powerful form. I immediately thought
of the
series of pictures from the Rosarium Philosophorum, the
German
alchemical pictures which Jung (1946) had used so
brilliantly
and profoundly to illustrate the transference. He
showed,
thereby, that the underlying meaning of the transference
was the
individuation process.
It was
1960, and I was back in the United States, in the midst of
the
hurly-burly of earning a living, being a husband and father,
trying
to maintain the deep inner connection with the soul which
was so
nourished by my years of training at the C.G. Jung
Institute
in Zurich. Sometimes I felt that I was not at all doing
what I had
been trained to do and found it beyond my powers to
connect
the introverted existence I had grown used to with the
requirements
of adaptation to work and life in extraverted
America.
The Oxherding Pictures were like a stream opening up
in the
midst of the dry Southern California desert. I recalled my
dream
of my psyche opening to the orient (see East and West: A
Personal
Statement) and once more felt a continuity of process.
My own
individuation was now proceding onward, despite the
appearance
of blockage and wrong-turning. Synchronistically, I
met my
first analysand from the Orient, and my link with the
East,
particularly with Japan, has not been seriously interrupted
ever
since.
Some
years later, in a seminar, I attempted to present a
commentary
on these pictures, along with my friend and colleague,
Mokusen
Miyuki, but found that I could in no way satisfactorily
convey
my understanding and appreciation of the series, despite
my
strong desire and an apparently receptive audience. Once
more I
experienced the gap between a charged and meaningful
inner
connection and my capacity to link this up with the outer
world.
This time, however, it was not only my own inner life that
was
involved, it was the larger interior life of the whole cultural
experience
of Buddhism which was hard to convey. Within a short
time,
however, Buddhism burst into California like a great flood,
along
with the spiritual revolution of the sixties, and soon its
general
attitudes, tenets and techniques became a part of the
general
consciousness of spiritually inclined people. A deeper
sense
of reconciliation of inner and outer, of connection with "the
face
before you were born," with the Self and its unity, were just
as
evanescent as ever.
At that
time, there appeared a paper by the same great scholar
of
Buddhism, D.T. Suzuki (1964),"Awakening of a New Consciousness
in
Zen," which included the Oxherding Pictures, along with a
brief
commentary. When I saw how even the great Suzuki
struggled
to convey his comprehension of Enlightenment and the
difficulties
with it, I was consoled. I was startled to discover,
however,
that my own understanding of the pictures differed in
some
measure from his. Who was I to have a view about such a
work at
all? I realized, then, that I was using the pictures as a
guideline,
a source, and from a psychological point of view and not as
a
scholar, a religious partisan (Buddhist), nor one thoroughly
steeped
spiritually and culturally in such matters. I shall have
occasion,
in what follows, to mention these differences of interpretation,
but
mainly I shall be continuing the process of my own use of
these
treasures from China and Japan. I shall, therefore, be
thinking
of individuation, rather than Enlightenment, will be experiential
rather
than scholarly, Californian and personal, rather than Oriental
and
transpersonal. I do attempt, however, to be comparative and
to
establish links with the scholarly and transpersonal.
Before
I turn to the pictures themselves, I wish to continue this
explanation
of how I arrived at even the possibility of such an
endeavor.
In 1967, while at work on a fictional account of the
individuation
process in various cultures and climes, I was inspired
to
write a story of such a process using those same Oxherding
Pictures.
In April 1967, on Buddha's birthday, I began such a story,
called
The Ronin, which was my best attempt to both live through
and
convey the individuation theme as shown in the pictures.
That
story became part of a larger work, The Tree: Tales in Psycho-
Mythology,
(1982, Falcon Press, Phoenix Az.) as I mention in East
and
West: A Personal Statement. The Ronin is included in this book
as
another way of communicating what it is that we are about in
the
individuation process or the journey towards Enlightenment.
This
fictional account was followed up by another story of
individuation
seen from pictures, this time from those almost-asfascinating
images
in Kundalini Yoga, commented upon by
Arthur
Avalon (1918) in The Serpent Power. This story, in contrast to
the
Buddhist spiritual warrior in The Ronin, is from a Hindu
woman's
point of view. It is called Maya, the Yogini. These two tales,
plus
the use of the Rosarium pictures of alchemy (in the story of The
African)
in that same book, The Tree, began to satisfy my quest for a
kind of
ecumenical individuation and spiritual journey with the use
of
pictures. Finally, it took three volumes to truly bring together
the
many-fold stories and variations into one larger Kabbalistic,
Taoistic,
Buddhistic, Christian, Pagan whole (1975,1982,1984 ff).
So
continued my desire to explicate or communicate this hardto-
describe
process to a larger public. I grew to realize that this
same
effort at communication was still part of my own process of
linking
up this strange inner unity and multiplicity to the outer
world
with its equally strange unity and multiplicity. I thought
that my
efforts could come to rest, but this was not to be the case.
The
vicissitudes of publishing (rejection, then acceptance but the
publisher
going bankrupt), continued the same adventure but
now in
the outer world. So the same conflict of inner and outer,
East
and West, introversion and extraversion, spirit and body,
continued,
now embodied in my"childn (the three books of fiction)
being
able to walk around on its own in the world.
It was
not until 1982 that this long-term repeat of the blockage
of
1959-60 was opened up once more. Again, the opening came
from
the East, from Japan. My colleague, Dr. Mokusen Miyuki,
and I
were invited to be principal speakers in an East-West
Conference
taking place in Tokyo and Kyoto. I thus wrote my
East-West
paper for that conference, speaking around the time,
once
more, of Buddha's birthday, and enjoyed a totally heartwarming
reception
from Japanese people. Among my many East-
West
experiences was contact with a Swiss Catholic Priest who
was a
scholar of Japanese Buddhism, and a Japanese Protestant
Minister
who was about to become a Jungian Analyst! I felt at
home.
That
same period brought my re-connection with a friend, who
had now
become a publisher and was interested in bringing out
my
work, both fiction and non-fiction. And so, the circle (as in
Oxherding
picture VIII) comes around to its starting point and I
once
more have the opportunity to sum up and convey what those
pictures
mean to me. For the last three or four years, I have also
lectured
on these pictures to candidates in Jungian training, to
give
them another view of the individuation process, in addition to
that
shown by Jung's alchemical portrayal. Here ends the apologia,
that a
Westerner might be so audacious as to write a commentary
at all!
Introduction
Suzuki
(1960 p. 127) tells us that the originals of the pictures we
are
using were painted by a Zen Master of the Sung dynasty in
China,
called Kaku-an Shi-en. This same master also authored the
remarkable
poems and introductory comments which are attached
to the
pictures. The ones in general use in Japan, however, were
painted
by Shubun, a contemporary Japanese Zen priest of the
fifteenth
century. There are other sets of pictures with the same
or
similar theme, notably those by Seikyo (a contemporary of
Kaku-an)
and by Jitoku. These latter are notable in that the
process
ends with the circle, rather than the human reconnection
in life
as in Kaku-an's and that there is a longer sequence in which
the ox
undergoes notable whitening. These pictures will be
commented
upon later on, but here we can only note that the
Kaku-an
pictures are both more profound, in that they include
stages
beyond that attainment of wholeness shown by the circle,
and
that his pictures are more delicate, refined and differentiated.
It is
particularly remarkable of Kaku-an to have completed such a
full
task when his contemporaries, and the even later (1585) work
of Chu-hung
with poems by Pu-ming, are clearly more primitive
in
conception and execution.
When we
compare both sets of pictures with those of the
Rosarium,
we see at once that the Chu-hung and the alchemical
series
are of similar rough quality, so that Kaku-an's achievement
stands
out even more. What is suggested by this particula~
refinement
and differentiation of the Zen Master is uncertain
Clearly,
he is an inheritor of an already old and revealed tradition
with
highly differentiated concepts, stages and achievements,
whereas
the alchemical tradition was usually a hidden one
Alchemy
was in a very different relation to the socially accepted
religion
of Christianity than the Oxherding pictures was to
Buddhism.
Whereas the latter explicated the basic tenets and
revealed
them, alchemy compensated the prevailing religion by
describing
a work in nature and in man, as Jung so eloquently
demonstrates.
So we have, as we shall see, a remarkably modern
and
clear presentation of the developmental process in the older
commentary
by Kaku-an, in contrast to the alchemical work
which
is abstruse and seemingly more distant to our modern ear,
though
closer to us in time and culture. Thanks to Jung, however,
we can
connect these two works, arising in roughly similar times
but
continents away in space. I believe, however, they are
complementary
in spirit.
Both
series have ten pictures, just as do the Kundalini series,
and
those of Tarot (at least for the ten Sephiroth of the Kabbalistic
Tree of
Life; there are additional pictures of course, for their
interconnections).
Jung informs us (Vol. 16,1946, paragraph 525
and
footnote) that ten, the denarius, is considered to be a perfect
number.
The Axiom of Maria, an alchemical formula of wholeness,
runs
4,3,2,1, in sequence. The sum of these numbers is ten, which
stands
for unity on a higher level. This same unity, as Jung
explains
from the alchemical sources, stands for the res simplex,
God as
an indivisible unity and the monad. God is ten, therefore
the
beginning and end of all numbers. The archetypal significance
of this
-- which probably holds for the
Oriental psyche as well as
the
West -- is that of the Self, in Jung's
sense, the symbolic
representation
of that totality. The presentation of exactly ten
pictures
on both continents, then, portrays and unfolds the nature
of that
wholeness, which we in the West call God and the East calls
Self.
As we
look at the structure of the pictures themselves, we
immediately
note that the Rosarium images have no outer frame at
all, in
contrast to those of the Oxherding series. Those of Chuhung
have a
very clear square to contain the series, while Kaku-an
uses
both an outer square for each picture and an inner circle to
contain
the content and action. Does this perhaps also reflect that
the
Oriental way is "contained" and part of the prevailing religious
collective,
whereas the alchemical images are, indeed, outside the
pale,
not contained in the prevalent religious structure? I think
that
this is true, since the very beginning of the alchemical series
shows
the problem and presentation of the "vessel" itself: a
Mercurial
fountain and a basin into which the waters flow and
from
which they arise. The framing is provided by symbols such as
the
snakes spitting smoke, the stars, sun and moon and not simply
lines.
We are faced with the problem of the vessel, the container,
right
away. Where does the transformation take place? In matter,
in
chemicals, in people, in nature? No person is shown in the
Rosarium at the outset, only the attempt
at discovering the basis of
the
transformation process itself. In the Oxherding series, we are
immediately
confronted with a person, the young man, and know
at once
that his dilemma and search is at the core of the issue. He is
the one
to be transformed. So, then, the structure or frame --
Buddhism
and meditation -- is
already known. How different
from
the "experiments" of alchemy!
As we
consider, next, this issue of the appearance of people in
the
pictures, we again perceive a central difference. The human
being
is presented at the outset, and continually in the Eastern
series,
with his absence being particularly notable and significant
in the
last-but-one picture and its predecessor. In the Rosarium
series,
after the initial image which is concerned with the vessel,
all
pictures portray the vicissitudes of the person, but as a pair,
male
and female, king and queen. In the latter, the entire series is
concerned
with the differentiation and union of these two
alchemical
figures, resulting in a oneness, a hermaphrodite, at the
end.
With the Oxherding series, however, we are involved with
one
person, an ordinary young man, until he vanishes temporarily,
with
good reason, only to emerge at the end, changed, transformed,
old,
but full of the life and vitality of the Enlightened person.
We can
clearly see the complementary nature of the process as
grasped
by the two world-views. In the one, contained and
understood
in the religious collective of the day, there is the task
of the
ordinary person to achieve Enlightenment. In the other --
secret,
apart and even unknowing of what one is about -- there
gradually
emerges a knowledge that the person is a vessel for the
union
of opposites, and that, finally, individuation is a process
which
requires human relationship. Jung makes much of this
relationship
requirement in his commentary, so that it is particularly
notable
how the two sets end. In the West there is a unity, one
androgynous
creature. In the East there is the lonely man, after a
long
work with himself, finally joining other people in ordinary
life
(the wine-bibbers, etc.) At the end, he even meets someone
who
looks remarkably like he, himself, looked at the outset.
One
gets images from such presentations. In the East, the
seeker
meditates, alone. He seeks advice from a Master, may even
live in
a monastery, but ultimately he meditates alone. In the
West,
one seeks psychotherapy, and the process of individuation is
very
much felt in the context of the analytical relationship.
Indeed,
the very content of this individuation process in psycho-
therapy
reveals itself -- unexpectedly
from the point of view of the
founders
of this discipline -- in the
relationship itself, the
transference.
So man
alone transforms himself and comes back into the
world;
and man finds himself in relation with another and thus
unifies
the fragmentation of his soul. Complementary, indeed! It
seems
particularly striking that the psyche, East and West, was
presenting
itself in this complementary fashion around the same
time in
the fifteenth century in China and Japan, and in the
sixteenth
century in Europe. Was there a similar "renaissance" of
the
spirit being worked on in both areas of the world? And now,
more
than four hundred years later, when we compare, unite and
further
develop the spirits of the East and West, are we in the
midst
of another "renaissance," presaging world unity?
If we
look a little further into this role of the personlpersons in
the two
sets of pictures, we see that in the East there is no female.
In the
West, the feminine is present from the outset, in the
symbolic
form of vessel, of moon, etc., and then quite literally
throughout
in the form of the queen. In the East, no woman at all.
How
many women meditated, visited gurus, sought enlightenment?
Some,
of course, since there have been Zen priestesses, for
example,
for a very long time. It was mostly a man's work,
however.
But was alchemy so different? There was Maria
Prophetissa,
of course, and the profound influence of her "axiom,"
but
were there female alchemists? One doesn't know, but Jung
intuits
and I think rightly, that there must have been some form of
soror
mystica, a feminine partner who was something additional to
the
projection of the male alchemist's own anima. But we know
nothing
of this. In the pictures, however, the feminine is clearly
personified
in the West, but in the East, it is all background. It is a
circle,
it is nature, it is the animal, it is both the source and goal of
the
work.
In the
East it is assumed, but not personified. In the West it is
personified
and consciously united with. Perhaps it is part of the
West's
gift to have the feminine as an equal, participatory partner
and
that a future set of pictures, East and West, will have the
personal
feminine and her process as much a part of the work as is
archetypally
portrayed in these two sets.
It
would be a mistake, however, to simply call both sets just a
part of
the masculine individuation process or search for Enlightenment.
They
are, rather, portraits of the "masculine," not men,
just as
the portrayal of nature, circle, etc. are of the"femininer'and
not
women. We are witness to the growth and differentiation of
the
archetypal opposites, of king and queen, and not just those of
our
ordinary egos. Both sets give us Enlightenment about
ourselves,
male and female, masculine and feminine, and their
union.
We can
turn, now, to the individual pictures of the Eastern
series,
to concentrate on their sequence, and only occasionally
remark
on the comparison with the West. Before we do so,
however,
one should note that another Eastern series, that of the
Kundalini,
shares characteristics of the West, in that the male and
female,
god and goddess, are part of almost every picture,
ultimately
leading to a genderless union at the highest level. In
this,
it is like the West. But in Kundalini, male, as form, only
gradually
grows in power and signficance, whereas female, as
energy
and power, gradually differentiates and becomes civilized
and
spiritualized. In East and West, we have glimpses of the need
to
civilize and differentiate, as well as to redeem and recover our
origins
in nature and instinct. But the Oxherding series departs
from
Kundalini, just as Buddhism did from Hinduism.
We
shall present Kaku-an's commentary and poem, for each
picture,
followed by a discussion of their meaning to us.
Picture One: Searching for the Ox
The beast has never gone astray, and what
is the use of
searching for him? The reason the oxherd is
not on intimate
terms with him is that the oxherd himself
has violated his
own inmost nature. The beast is lost, for
the oxherd has
himself been led out of the way, through
his deluding senses.
His home is receding farther away from him,
and byways and
crossways are ever confused. Desire for
gain and fear of loss
burn like fire; ideas of right and wrong
spring up like a
phalanx.
Alone in the wilderness, lost in the
jungle,
the boy is searching, searching!
The swollen waters, the faraway mountains,
and the unending path;
Exhausted and in despair, he knows not
where to go,
He only hears the evening cicadas singing
in the maple woods.
How
modern sound these words of Kaku-an! How strange that
our ear
can hear the plaint of the contemporary person who has
lost
his soul and is in search of it, here and there and everywhere.
No longer
believing in God, nor man, nor "isms," the person
described
in Jung's works as "A Modern Man in Search of a Soul"
is cut
off from himself, estranged from his own depths, not
knowing
where to turn. So, too, is the oxherd, of four hundred
years
ago, lost.
But
what is this ox that he is searching for? Suzuki tells us that
it is
the mind, or heart, or better yet, the Self. It is that Self of the
Buddhist,
or that Self of the Jungians, which is the center and
higher
authority within, or the totality of his being, which is
portrayed
here as an animal. Suzuki also tell us (1964, p. 198) that
the ox
comes from the niu in
Chinese, or ushi in
Japanese, which
designates
the bovine family generally; it is ox and cow and bull, of
no
specific gender. It is the sacred animal in India and this
compared
to the Self, or, as we in the West might say, the God
within.
What
Suzuki does not say, but perhaps those who are more
familiar
with the symbolism in other cultures can realize, is that the
Self
here appears as an animal, just as the Divine appears
represented
as an animal in many traditions, even Christianity
(Jesus
as the Lamb, for instance, and the evangelists with animal
symbols
as representative of them). When we come to discuss
pictures
IV to V1 we shall see how it is that we can have adifferent
view
than Suzuki of this matter, but here we are in agreement: the
ox
equals Self.
How can
it be that the young man (ourselves) is estranged from
the
Self, himself. "The beast has never gone astray,"says the text,
and
Suzuki agrees. The original Self, or home, is one that we have
never
left, but "owing to our intellectual delusions, we are led to
imagine
(the Self) has disappeared from our sight. Searching for
the
lost is a great initial error we all commit, which makes us think
we are
finally awakened to a new consciousness.~~
Our
psychological consciousness may help us understand this
paradox.
The original Self, of course, is always there. It is ther'face
before
we were born,"it is the potential wholeness from which we
come at
the outset of existence and to which we both return and
achieve.
But it is also something from which we can be estranged,
just as
we, in the modern day, can be estranged from our animal
nature,
as is implied by the Oxherding pictures. Full of our
modern
rationalist delusions, the belief that reason and external
evidence
provide the only truth, we are cut off from our animal
wisdom,
our instincts. We thus endure a kind of deadness, cut off
from
vitality and spontaneity, or else we are split and experience
mind
and body as apart, separated.
The
wonder is that this dilemma can be expressed with such
poetry
and accuracy in the pictures and words of an alien culture
of more
than 400 years ago! Can it be that the Chinese and
Japanese
of the fifteenth century, whom we usually believe to be
more
whole and united than we of the scientific present day, were
also
afflicted with our disease? It seems to be. Not only that, but
there
is indication that such a struggle comes from an older
tradition,
that these poems and pictures are already part of the
institution
of healing, just as is modern psychotherapy. This tells
us that
our perceived understanding of the predicament of
modern
man is not exclusively modern at all. In every age,
perhaps,
there is the tendency of the psyche to dissociate itself, to
spontaneously
produce "neurosis," not as a consequence of
external
events alone, but as a result of the need of the soul itself
to
differentiate further, to acquire more consciousness. Von
Franz
describes just such a condition in her introduction to the
interpretation of Fairy Tales (1970). Splitting
and fragmentation can
occur
in the larger culture, just as it can in the individual, as the
need to
develop further, to fulfil1 that same potential of greater
consciousness
which was there in the beginning.
Is it
not also possible that the China and Japan of the fifteenth
century
were also in a condition similar to that of Europe,
undergoing
an upheaval, in which the order of the middle ages
was
breaking up?
In any
case, the words here speak to our modern condition very
well.
Nowadays, we have more than ever "gone astray" and we are
not on
good terms with our inmost nature. Kaku-an tells us that
we are
lost because of our "deluding senses." What deludes us is
the act
of giving total authority to what our five senses present to
us from
without, or even from within, and we do not open
ourselves
to mystery, imagination, to the images which embellish
and
enrich and even go beyond the information presented from
those
same senses. So we are ever further away from the
experience
of wholeness and aliveness, the sense of wonder
without
which life is a meaningless round of drudgery.
Kaku-an
tells us the psychic content of such a soul who is
confused
on the way, knows he is lost, but has no sense of where
to find
the path. "Desire for gain and fear of loss burn like fire,
ideas
of right and wrong spring up like a phalanx." Again what an
insight!
Desire, and competition and yearning for material gain is
our
plague. We are a wild, undisciplined animal who lives in an
urban
jungle, far from home. Along with the plague of desire
comes a
judge with rigid views of right and wrong, ever evaluating
and
condemning. Self and others are found wanting, we receive
no
compassion, enjoy no rest. Is this not a poetic rendering of what
the
first modern psychologist diagnosed? Id versus Superego, said
Freud;
wish and desire versus guilt and judgment. Such is the
kingdom
of our discontent, such is the pessimistic struggle for
which
there is only consciousness as a valued outcome, a sweet
reason
of awareness in the midst of pain.
But the
Oxherding pictures and Zen promise more than a
diagnosis
of despair and hopelessness, even here in the first
picture.
The"moreJ'is found in the poem, the soft words of which
picture
for us the condition and the hope as well. The poet tells us
of the
lostness, and the searching, the unending searching. He
tells
us of the exhaustion and despair and the not knowing where
to go.
But he also tells us that the lost boy hears "the evening
cicadas
singing in the maple woods."
What is
this cicada if not the voice of nature herself, chirping her
age-old
tune of joy and happiness, of oneness and harmony with
herself.
The Oxford Dictionary tells
us that the cicada is a"homopterous
insect,"
which means that its wings are of uniform texture,
patterned
and harmonious. Our western version of the cicada is
the
cricket, which the Standard
Dictionary of Folklore (1949) tells us
was
"much esteemed in antiquity," and had the quality of bringing
good
and bad fortune, depending upon one's attitude toward it. It
was a
prophet (of rain, death, or the approach of an absent lover), a
nostrum
in healing, and a personification of the spirit of the
house,
especially at the hearth. Thus the cicada is a symbol for
potential
order, for harmony, for the oneness or union of animal
and man
(insect and warming center of civilized condition).
Depending
upon one's attitude, we are thereby in tune with time
(prophecy),
love, renewal and even healed. Our suffering youth,
then,
in hearing the cicada, is given an intuition, a promise of
wholeness
in tiny, hardly visible form. His suffering is not just
that of
endless despair, but he can perceive the possiblity of hope
as
well.
We must
not forget the other imagery of the poem and what our
modern
psychology can tell us about it. "Swollen waters": a
symbol
of the filled unconscious, ready to disgorge its contents,
frightening,
but promising renewal. "Faraway mountains": a
symbol
of the individuation process, that struggle to reach the
higher
vision, to master oneself and touch the place where God
lives,
atop mountains; for where God lives, there is higher
consciousness
and greater vision. And finally, the "unending
path":
the ancient symbol of the "way," the process of moving
Godward,
of the seeking of the treasure hard to obtain.
All
this does the poet tell us and all this does he convey in that
oriental
fashion, with an image, with a word, a kind of haiku of the
spiritual
path.
Picture II: Seeing
the Traces
By the aid of the sutras and by inquiring
into the doctrines, he
has come to understand something, he has
found the traces.
He now knows that vessels, however varied,
are all of gold,
and that the objective world is a
reflection of the Self. Yet, he
is unable to distinguish what is good from
what is not, his
mind is still confused as to truth and
falsehood. As he has not
yet entered the gate, he is provisionally
said to have noticed
the traces.
By the stream and under the trees,
scattered
are the traces of the lost;
The sweet-scented grasses are growing
thick--
did he find the way?
However remote over the hills and faraway
the beast may wander,
His nose reaches the heavens and none can
conceal it.
Kaku-an
now tells us how one can procede on the path to
spiritual
growth, to Enlightenment, to one's reconciliation with
one's
self when one is confused and tormented. Given one's
ignorance,
one studies the sutras and enquires into the doctrines.
We must
then, in our modern dilemma, which seeks the psychotherapeutic
route
to Enlightenment or individuation, read the
Bible -- Jewish and Christian -- the Koran, as well as the true
sutras
of the East. Thereby, says Kaku-an, will we come to
"understand
something," we will find the traces. "The traces of
what,"
we may ask? Why the traces of the ox, the divine spirit, the
Self
which has been apprehended by many in the past, and has left
its
deposits in the great books, the holy texts, the commentaries.
There,
at least, we may begin to get a glimpse of how others saw it,
of how
the divine has manifested itself in the cultures and peoples
of
other times and places, as well as the culture into which were
born,
and of whose mysteries and truths we have grown tired and
can not
abide. Seen another way, the mysteries of all of these are
unfathomable
to us because we have not yet, or can no longer,
grasp
them as a living experience.
Still,
says Kaku-an, the sutras, the texts, can help us find the
traces.
Through such study and intellectual attention we can at
least
come to comparative truths. We can discover that "vessels,
however
varied, are all of gold." That is to say, we can realize that
all
religions, all systems which pursue the manifestation of the
numinous,
of God or the Self, contain a seed or expression of that
divine
spark which touched the writers and seekers. All containers,
all
theories, are valuable and holy. And, are we but wise enough to
grasp
it, we can see that no vessel is the only one made of gold. No
religion
or creed can rightly claim to be the true and exclusive
carrier
of the divine. If all vessels are of gold, then no vessel is
particularly
golden. Yet each vessel, when one is inside it, contains
the
golden, and sometimes, when that Self speaks through its
imagery,
through its words and experience, it would seem to be
the
only olie, the particular and amazing. When God speaks to me,
I feel
that my soul is His beloved, that He speaks only to me, and it
is hard
for me to know that He does, indeed, speak only to me
when He
talks to me, but that He has many bther lovers as well!
And He
speaks to them in strange tongues, and sometimes in ways
which
seem anathema to me. So, if God speaks in Sanskrit and
Chinese
and Japanese, as well as Hebrew and Greek, Latin and
Arabic,
German and English, well then, the many tongues are
relative.
But that is for the most modernday, the day that Suzuki,
too,
speaks of (1964, p. 198), that time when the world is
"becoming
one, as it should, and the distinction of East and West is
disappearing,
though slowly." This day, our day, is not that of
Kaku-an,
yet he is like us when he knows that all vessels are of
gold.
Kaku-an
also knows, in this second picture, that the seeker will
discover
thro~gh the sutras, that the "objective world is a
reflection
of the Self." Yes, we can discover that the same world
which
deceived us with its multiplicity and variety, with its
unnourishing
prescriptions, with its facts which offended us, is
also a
representation of that Self which we are seeking. God's
body is
"out there" in the world for all to see. The divine is all that
mess
and confusion, hatred and division, as well as the wonder and
love
and harmony. What, now; is that all we have found through
our
study? No, says Kaku-an, no, indeed. For we still cannot
distinguish
"what is good from what is not," what is true and what
is
false. We have learned something, but we still do not know the
truth
of thinking and the values of feeling. We are not yet, in
short,
in touch with our own truth,
our own values, our own Self. We
know
the languages that God has spokenin the past, but we do not
yet
know His own to us. We have seen traces but have not yet
experienced
the Being itself. And now when we speak of God as
"He,"
we think, most modernly, that ushi and niu are
oxes in the
sense
of gender-free, not castrated; that the divine transcends role
and
sex, even animal and human! But, as we have not yet entered
the
gate, have not yet had our own experience of the divine, we
can
only say that we have "noticed the traces."
The
poem leads us in a somewhat different direction. Suzuki
tells
us that there is nowhere that the kokoro
is not. "We are always
in it,
we are it." There is nowhere to seek, nowhere to hide,
because
"all our running can never be outside the kokoro itself."
Thus
the Self is everywhere we look, and everywhere we do not
look,
for we are in the Self, and are the Self, and as a later picture
advises
us, it was silly for us to seek in the first place. But seek we
must,
because we are unhappy, and because, (and here is where,
perhaps,
we part from the wisdom of Suzuki and rely on
psychological
knowledge) this same Self wanted us to do so.
Perhaps
God Himself, without even being aware of it, cast us out
so that
we could bring Him back information about Himself. He
had
everything, it seems, except a partner He could talk to. The
Angels
only echoed (except for the Devil) and maybe He got bored.
The
paradox of the Fortunate Fall is one instance; without our fall
there
would have been no great mystery of redemption. Another
is that
perhaps there is a natural tendency, i.e. the division within
Nature
itself, seeking, as we noted from von Franz earlier on, to
enhance
its own knowledge, to increase consciousness for its own
sake.
In any event, as Suzuki insists, "there is nothing that can
hide
him." All that hides him is that we have not yet experienced
him.
Perhaps
we have to wander by the stream and under the trees,
lose
ourselves in the sweet palm-grasses of the swamps of our
desire
and fantasy, in order to begin to reach him. No matter
where
we go, to whatever theory or belief, or to every abstruse
and
deviant sect, however wrong-headed we find it, the ox is
there.
Suzuki, once more, says that when nothing can hide the ox,
"It
is we who shut our own eyes and pitifully bemoan that we
cannot
see anything (1964, p. 199)." This is surely true, because
the
nose reaches the heavens and none can conceal it. And yet,
how is
it that this same beast eludes us in our own experience?
How is
it that we must make great effort, even despair at length,
before
we can go beyond the traces? Is it not because this selfsame
ox
wants us to do so? Does he not require us to pursue, to
sweat
and to struggle, so that our finding will make the grasses
even
sweeter, the hills even grander? In the reaching of the nose
into
the heavens, does the ox not show us the way to search?
And
now, indeed, we know that the ox not only is hard to find,
but is
everywhere, and not only is he beyond our reach, but he
wants
us to reach him, and without our attempt there is nothing.
For
even if we had it all along, perhaps there was no one there to
know
that we had it, and this, indeed, is what the ox desires. Yes,
we have
desire and ignorance, and perhaps the ox, too, has desire
and
ignorance? Suzuki would say no, and so would the religions
of the
West, but perhaps one can conjecture the psychological
possibility
without disrespect.
But we
are only at Picture I1 and to speculate so is merely to
argue
with the sutras, merely to note the vessels without actually
experiencing
the ox. We are still in the state of "Seeing the
Traces."
Picture III: Seeing
the Ox
The boy finds the way by the sound he
hears: he sees thereby
into the origin of things, and his senses
are in harmonious
order. In all his activites, it is
manfestly present. It is like the
salt in water and the glue in color. (It is
there though not
distinguishable as an individual entity.)
When the eye is
properly directed, he will find that it is
no other than himself.
On a yonder branch perches a nightingale
cheerfully singing;
The sun is warm, and a soothing breeze
flows, on the bank the willows are green;
The Ox is there all by himself, nowhere
is he to hide himself;
The splendid head decorated with stately
horns -- what painter can reproduce him?
Now, at
last, after wandering and not knowing, after reading
and
studying and reflecting, we go beyond the traces, we come to
the
experience itself. This, says Suzuki (1964 p. 199), is "the
awakening
of 'a new consciousness'; it is the finding of the
precious
animal which is no other than the man himself." But this
is not
a new finding, it was there all along. It is there in all his
activities,
everything the seeker does. It is not distinguishable (the
salt in
water and glue in color) from the surroundings, it is that
quality
which is inherent in all.
Well,
our oxherd knew this from his reading and studying, how
is it
different now? It is different in that he knows it is himself, or
better,
his Self, and he knows it through experience. Now he
knows
it by theUsound he hears," not by what he reads. He listens,
it
seems. Does he hear the voice of God? Does the Self speak to
him
personally now, just to him and to no other? Does he now
begin
to hear his own language, the words of his own being,
calling
him from within, just as he was seeking,
seeking without? I
think
so, particularly when Kaku-an tells us: "When the eye is
properly
directed, he will find that it is no other than himself."
So,
Kaku-an sheds the light that the eye must look in the proper
place.
Is that not into one's being, one's own fantasies and dreams,
affects
and strivings? Was it not the ox itself that was driving him
to the
ox? Once more we think so, for how else can one know the
Self
unless one knows the self? How can we learn the nature of
the
totality unless we know our own? And there he is, in the
picture,
revealed.
What is
it that is revealed? The poet speaks of the "splendid head
decorated
with stately horns." Indeed "what painter can reproduce
him?"
He wears the beautiful crown of the divine, the horns of
grandeur,
and there is no way to show his image. This reminds us
of the
Hebrew word of Torah, enjoining us to produce no graven
image
of the divine. We are commanded not to, nor to utter His
name,
for there is no image, there is no word that can encompass
this
grandeur and wonder and totality. Can the part truly grasp
the
whole, or render it? Certainly not -- but we
must try.
What is
it, then, that is revealed here in the picture? No grand
head,
but a homely behind! No kingly spiritual crown nor
impressive
sound of the voice, but the vulnerable place of man and
beast,
our hind-end from which come our excreta, our rejected
and unused,
that of which we are unconscious. It is our shadow, as
Jung
says, our own dark side. Is this not so when we truly
undertake
the voyage of discovery of ourselves? Is it not our own
shadows
and darkness that is first revealed? This is the wisdom
that the
artist sees, when the poet looks elsewhere. One voice
knows
what the other does not.
The
rear end we discover, however, is not only our own, which
we
apprehend all too painfully and sorrowfully, but that of the
Self
itself. This ox, after all, is not only our own personal ox, but
the
collective ox, the common content of the soul of us all. And
here
the Master Kaku-an shows us truly and intuitively that it is
the
dark side of God that reveals itself to us. All the sutras, all the
books,
all the commandments, products of many minds, many
years,
many devotions, show us the whole story, but they cleanse,
too,
their own darkness, and it is hidden from us. It is only in our
own
struggle, our own pain of dry meditation, of anger at pain and
discomfort,
of bleak dreams and disgusting images that we come
to our
darkness and, at last, the darkness of the divine as well.
"The
dark night of the soul," another seeker tells us, is essential
before
we can find the light. So suggests this picture, too.
All the
same, however, we have at last found the ox. Once
seeing
him, once knowing that he arises from our inner search,
our
reflection and meditation, our fantasy and dream, we can then
know
that the "sun is warm, and a soothing breeze blows." The
willows
are green and the nightingale sings, cheerfully, for nature is
in
harmony with the divine, indeed is the divine. We, at last, see
our
nature, understand that what we share with all the animals
and
plants is a cleansing process, that we all partake in materiality
and
unknowingness. This realization, a gift to humans alone, is
the
source of our spiritual struggle and path. No body, no true
spirit;
no shadow, no true light; no dark side of God, no light side
either.
Hard to understand, hard to accept (as we shall see even
with
Suzuki presently), but there for us to see. The artist and the
poet,
inspired, tells us the truth.
Picture IV: Catching the Ox
Long lost in the wilderness, the boy has at
last found the ox
and his hands are on him. But, owing to the
overwhelming
pressure of the outside world, the ox is
hard to keep under
control. He constantly longs for the old
sweet-scented field.
The wild nature is still unruly, and
altogether refuses to be
broken. If the oxherd wishes to see the ox
completely in
harmony with himself, he has surely to use
the whip freely.
With the energy of his whole being, the boy
has at last taken hold of the ox:
But how wild his will, how ungovernable
his power!
At times he struts up a plateau,
When lo! he is lost again in a misty unpenetrable
mountain pass.
The
hands of the youth are now upon the ox and the task of
training
and discipline is upon us. Oh, how our desires are
primitive
and unruly! Oh, how our laziness and the hugging of our
primitivity
captures us. Our wild nature is unruly and refuses to
be
broken, indeed. But, is this only our own nature that is so
resistive?
Suzuki thinks so. He thinks that "Pictures IV, V, and V1
are
misleading. It is really not the animal but the man himself that
needs
training and whipping." This is surely true. It is our own
animal
nature that must be tamed and trained, taught and
civilized.
But is the picture truly misleading? I think not. The thing
that
the youth (and we) have gotten our hands upon is the Self,
after
all, and it is the Self,
as well as our Self. What
we have gotten
our
hands on is the unconscious animal nature of God Himself! It
is that
in Him which is also unruly, primitive, unconscious, as Jung
has
shown so powerfully in his work, particularly in Answer to Job
(1952).
We face the paradox that the Self, God, is in all nature, is
nature,
and partakes both of its great beauty and harmony, and
also of
its horror, disharmony, and wild disregard. It is the divine
in us,
indeed, that needs transforming, but it is, at last, the divine
itself.
This penetrating insight of Jung is the one that is most
difficult
for many followers of a particular religious system to
harmonize
for themselves. This is so, whether it is the profound
and
appreciative Catholic view of a Father White (1961) or even, as
here,
the view of the great D.T. Suzuki himself.
Why
should this perspective be so difficult? I think it is because
Jung
hit on the peculiarly alchemical character of the work with
the
psyche, as he found it among those who had lost their belief in
the
received religious tradition. For them, and for many of the
moderns
who are "in search of the soul," (See also, A Modern
Jew in
Search a Soul, Falcon Press, winter
1985) the work becomes the
redemption
of the divine spark in nature, in their own nature, and
thus
they are in the hidden and mysterious alchemical tradition.
So,
even here, in a work which is in the heart of the Zen tradition,
a
leading exponent sees the apparent clarity of the taming of the
animal
as misleading. It is surely we who need the taming, but as
the
pictures show, it is the divine itself. So, just as in the Rosarium
pictures,
which Jung used to illustrate individuation and transference,
there
is the dark power to be reckoned with, larger than ourselves,
yet
abiding in ourselves. Here, too, there is the dark power to be
struggled
with, tamed and even whipped, but we must also
remember
that it is the other half of the longed-for totality.
How
remarkable that this hint of the alchemical work (which is
even
more apparent in the next picture) should reveal itself here,
in
those times where the same struggle was going on in Europe!
There
is, one thinks, a synchronicity of the spirit world-wide,
when,
by dint of meaningful moment or development on a grand
plan,
an Isaiah and Buddha and a Socrates are contemporaneous,
or when
an alchemy of the soul occurs in East and West as well.
Kaku-an
tells us more about this uncanny ox. He tells us that
the animal
longs for the old sweet-scented field, that the divine
nature
and our nature, too, longs to remain unconscious and
"natural."
Our very attempt at consciousness, at the development
of the
soul, goes against the grain. Yet, as Jung tells us from
alchemy,
the work is both against nature, contra naturam, and with
nature,
for it is our own nature itself that drives us to higher
consciousness.
It is the hidden desire of the ox itself to push us, to
seek
us, to tame us, and we tame him. This insight is what gives us
the
permission, allows our audacity to "use the whip freely."
Without
this insight, without knowing that we are both the one
who
whips and is whipped, the one who commands and obeys, and
in so
doing, a pupil and servant of the divine itself -- without this
awareness
we are lost. Only then can we contain the overweening
pride,
the hubris of such an act.
How
wild the will, how ungovernable the power of this ox! At
times,
he struts up a plateau. He struts, does he not? He does not
walk or
run, but he struts. Like some proud and vainglorious cock,
he
ascends. Here is the source of our own to-be-tamed pride and
inflation:
it is contained in the divine itself. It is in our nature and
HislHer
nature. We are chosen ones, or as Suzuki puts it
commenting
on the previous picture: "Heaven above, heaven
below,
I alone am the honored one." I am honored because I am
addressed,
and I can only continue because I honor that which
addresses
me.
In my
struggle, it must be "with the energy of his (my) whole
being,"
it must command all of me. Do I seek my totality? Then I
must
give my totality. Even when I do, the ox is lost again in the
misty,
unpenetrable mountain pass. On the path of individuation,
upon
the ascent to my own highest vision, I lose that divine spark,
that
source of nature and vitality both within myself and beyond
myself.
It is gone again, and not to be found. And yet, it appears
once
more as I start at the beginning, at the perception of that
nether
end, that bit of untamed nature which is overlooked. Even
when I
don't look, the ox appears, for once I have glimpsed him, he
feels
affronted if I neglect him; he comes seeking me, too.
The
work is hard, though, and now we lose that initial
experience,
when we first saw himlher (as in Picture 111) and felt
the
serenity of nature, the nightingale cheerfully singing. The sun
may be
warm, and the breeze blows, but in this condition we know
only
struggle and agony and defeat, and achievement and victory
and
surrender, too.
The
work is hard not only because of us and of him, but, says
Kaku-an,
"owing to the overwhelming pressure of the outside
world."
What a modern, Enlightened thought is this! How much
of our
time is spent in adapting, in coping, in facing and struggling
with
the forces that present themselves in the outer world, when
we are
oh so eager to struggle within! The God we seek and
struggle
with within, we sometimes forget, is also there outside.
We
learned already in the previous pictures that God is in the
sutras
of tradition and there everywhere, the salt in water. It is
outside
as well as inside, and when we have discovered the one, we
are
hounded by the other. So does our work become doubly
difficult.
But, no
matter, we know, now, the place to look, the place to
struggle.
For even when the outside world disturbs us, we can
look at
our own reactions, struggle to be at one with ourselves in
relation
to these disturbances, so there is always work to be done,
something
to be tamed, a harmony to seek. We now at last have
what we
have been looking for.
Picture V: Herding the Ox
When a thought moves, another follows, and
then another --
an endless train of thoughts is thus
awakened. Through
enlightenment all this turns into truth;
but falsehood asserts
itself when confusion prevails. Things
oppress us not because
of an objective world, but because of a
self-deceiving mind. Do
not let the nose string loose, hold it
tight, and allow no
vacillation.
The boy is not to separate himself with his
whip and tether,
Lest the animal should wander away into a
world of defilements;
When the ox is properly tended to, he will
grow pure and docile;
Without a chain, nothing binding, he will
by
himself follow the oxherd.
Our
picture shows the ox, tamed and tempered, dociley
followillg
the youth on his tether. The picture shows success, but
the
words reveal continuing struggle. The thoughts move,
falsehood
asserts, confusion prevails, the animal wanders away
into a
world of defilements. No easy task this. Why, we wonder?
Suzuki
gives an answer. He says that the "habit of intellectualization,
or
conceptualization which has been going on ever since
his
'loss of innocence,' is extremely difficult to get rid of. The
identification
is something altogether new in his life. The adjustment
will
naturally take time." This is helpful and enlightening. It is
intellectualization
and conceptualization that has cut us off from
our own
nature. This has resulted in a loss of innocence, a loss of
connection
with our own nature, which is so difficult to overcome.
So,
again a paradox emerges: we developed intellectually and
conceptually
to advance consciousness; but to advance once more
in
consciousness we must return to our non-thinking nature!
That is
to say that we no longer identify ourselves solely with our
thinking
nature. It is this which is problematical. It is not difficult,
perhaps,
to merely regress and be an animal (though this, too,
becomes
repugnant to our differentiated functioning), but it is
very
hard to both return and advance, to recover our nature and
tame
it.
The
difficulty and complexity of this struggle may be the reason
why, in
Kaku-an's series, six of the ten pictures, sixty per cent of
the
process, portrays the image of dealing with the animal. Indeed,
the
name of the series itself, Oxherding Pictures, tells us that the
central
problem in our individuation is the recovery and taming of
our
lost natures. Without this -- and
this first -- there will be no
individuation.
Without this, we may perhaps have a bodiless and
false
spirituality, fit only for those who have no stomach (hara!) for
the
real thing. Later on, in discussing the final picture, we shall
take up
this issue of belly and what it means. Here, as we confront
the
overwhelming importance of the ox, we understand that the
main
chakra, or orientation of the Zen-Master and those of
similar
consciousness, is at the belly, the hara where we touch life.
It is
even where we approach death itself (hara-kiri).
We
notice something more about this ox, now, that commands
our
attention: it has undergone a whitening. From its dark initial
condition,
it shows itself in a lightened state. That this is not just
an
accident of printing is shown by the fact that a related series of
pictures,
that of Seikyo and Jitoku (see Manual ofZen Buddhism, 1960
pp.
127-129 and the subsequent pictures), clearly and explicitly
expresses
the process of the whitening of the ox. In that series, the
whole
process ends with an empty circle, the emptiness which
Kaku-an
(as we shall see) found insufficient to describe the
process
of Enlightenment. In the Seikyo series, eight out of ten, or
eighty
percent of the pictures, focus upon this cleansing, differentiating
process.
It is
from this fact that we can clearly and unequivocally link up
the Zen
Enlightenment process with the alchemical work as
described
by Jung. That transformation of nigredo (darkening,
unconsciousness)
to albedo (whitening, cleansing) is described by
him in
detail (in Psychology and Alchemy, Vol. 12, 1943, Mysferium
Conjuncfionis,
Vol. 14, 1954, and in other writings). This long
process,
that via longissima is also seen as the bulk of the work, to be
followed
by the rubedo (the reddening with new life), the cifrinifas
(yellowing)
and finally the cauda pavonis, the achievement of the
peacock's
tail with the entire rainbow of colors which signify the
end.
In our
present series, the colors are not included. We have,
instead,
the austere, black and white presentation of the process,
suitable
for that equally austere yet life-filled process of zazen, of
sitting
and meditating. There are, indeed, series which are in
color,
but I am not familiar enough with them to contrast those
with
the original set. The same austerity and side-wise reference
to
sitting, zazen, is probably contained in the comment, "when a
thought moves, another follows. .
." When we sit and focus upon
our
breathing, our emptiness, it is indeed the thoughts which
come to
disturb us, to push us away from our concentration. And
it is
our mind that we are trying to tame, that unruly freeassociative
mind
which takes us away from that moment of true
nothingness,
in which there are no more thoughts, only the
stillness,
which brings Enlightenment.
How
different is sitting, the zazen, and its aim, from our modern
psychotherapy!
Overcome the free-association, says our Zen-
Master.
Go with the free-association, says our Freudian analyst.
Ignore
the fantasies which arise, and let them go by, says the
Buddhist
teacher. Focus upon the fantasies and ultimately dialogue
with
them, says the Jungian analyst.
Does
such instruction produce different results? It seems to.
For the
Freudian, we find the face just after we were born, the
childhood
desires and terrors which are father to the man. Our
consciousness
is to overcome these, to arrive at the maturity of
full
capacity to love and to work, to know the world and the psyche
as it
is without illusion. For the Buddhist, it is the face before we
were
born, and to discover our unity with nature, and our oneness
with
all life. For the Jungian, it is both of these, the link with
collective,
inner and outer, and the discovery of our Selves. So, the
Jungian
might be the intermediary between the two; the psychotherapy
which
aims at healing, love and work, and freeing from
illusion,
but at Enlightenment, too. This theme will occupy us
once
more at the end.
Let us
consider, again, the words of Kaku-an, for the words, as
we have
said, continue with the consideration of the process and
not, as
the picture suggests, its conclusion.
Kaku-an
tells us first that even the endless stream of associations
"turns
into truth" when Enlightenment prevails, but this is not
the
case when we are confused, uncentered, unknowing. So, it is
not the
content, he informs us, or its flow that deludes us but the
place
from which we relate to it. When we are centered, all is in
harmony
and understandable; when we are not, confusion makes
it mere
falsehood. Kaku-an is the great psychologist here. He is a
combination
behaviorist of the cognitive variety, a Jungian, and,
of
course, a Buddhist.
Would that we could achieve now what he
saw
four hundred years ago!
He also
tells us that we are oppressed not by the outside world,
the
objective world which we noted to be troublesome when we
discussed
the previous picture, but because of our own selfdeceiving
mind.
Again it is our attitude, our center from which the
confusion
and trouble arises. These are hard words and wrong
from an
extraverted point-of-view (it is the social order, capitalism,
communism,
the environment, etc. which causes our problems),
but
right for the introvert. But Kaku-an is right all the same, at
least
when we are trying to deal with our own attitude, our own
contribution
to the oppression which falls upon us from without.
If we
can center, find the right relationship to it, then we are all
right.
The secret is that we can only find the right attitude to "it"
and to
"ourselves" when we include both, and just in the
proportion
that each "it" and "us" demands -- no more, no less. It is
this,
perhaps, that Kaku-an is referring to when he says, "Do not
let the
string loose, hold it tight, and allow no vacillation." I read
this
not only as an instruction in how to meditate efficiently, but a
statement
of the psychological condition: hold tight to the Self as
it
manifests, within and without; keep the event and the reaction
in its
particularity and do not let go until the resolution, the
harmony,
results. In either case, the advice is right, the medicine is
strong,
and hard to swallow.
This is
the theme of the poem, as well, expressed more
beautifully.
Do not separate yourself from the Self, he advises,
lest
the animal wander away into defilement. When properly
attended,
the ox grows pure and docile, and finally -- and
here,
with
more of an intuition than an achievement, as we saw in the
first
picture -- the animal, "without a
chain, nothing binding, he
ill by
himself follow the oxherd." What a promise this, and what
a task:
struggle and hold tight, relax and let go! No wonder we
drive
ourselves crazy in the search for Enlightenment and
wholeness!
But a hint is presented once more. The ox will come by
himself
when the time is right. He ultimately needs no chain, no
discipline,
only a relationship. And, though it is only hinted at and
not
expressed, we can guess that he will join us in this way because
he
wants to himself and not only because of our urgings and
efforts.
So, once more, Kaku-an holds out hope and direction.
Picture VI: Coming Home on the Ox's Back
The struggle is over: the man is no more
concerned with gain
and loss. He hums a rustic tune of the
woodman, he sings
simple songs of the village boy. Saddling
himself on the ox's
back, his eyes are fixed on things not of
the earth, earthy. Even
if he is called, he will not turn his head;
however enticed, he
will no more be kept back.
Riding on the animal, he leisurely wends
his
way home:
Enveloped in the evening mist, how tunefully
the flute vanishes away!
Singing a ditty, beating time, his heart is
filled with a joy indescribable!
That he is now one of those who know, need
it be told?
"The
struggle is over, the man is
no more concerned. . ." Now
suddenly,
we find that the boy has become a man. It is as if one is a
youth
when beginning the struggle with the instincts, and is a
man
when one has satisfactorily adjusted to them and to the
world.
That is certainly how it is in society and culture: the
initiation
into adulthood has indeed to do with the relation to our
animal
nature. But here the process of initiation is also made clear
in the
non-societal struggle in the spiritual world. Maturity of the
soul
requires an inner struggle with our animal nature as a way to
Selfhood,
and is concluded only when that is achieved. Is this true
also
for women? Is one a girl until one has related fully to the
instinct?
Maybe the imagery is different. Perhaps here the
Rosarium pictures and their implied
qualities of relationship and
union
is more germane. For girls to become women, in many
societies,
happens only with marriage. It is the conjunctio in the
world
which brings maturity. But then, again, perhaps it is not so
different
for women in the spiritual realm. The great individuation
pictures
illustrated in the Villa of Mysteries, and
as described by
Linda
Fierz-David (1957) suggest that it is the
self-same struggle
with
passion and the animal world which enables the woman of
spirit
to come to maturity of soul. So, perhaps these pictures of
Zen
transcend not only culture, East and West, but the malelfemale
polarity
as well. That is for women themselves to decide.
Here we
can view the maturation of the spirit in its apparent
finality:
the struggle is over. The seeker is no longer concerned
with
gain and loss. What an achievement this is! When can any of
us, in
the West, transcend our endless striving for this and that,
our
bottomless pit of desire, our mad mind, which our host the
American
Indian finds as crazy? When do we. find our heart, our
earthy
and rustic heart, our feeling for life and nature? Only when
we do
so are we grown up enough to sing the songs of the village
boy, to
feel free to express that youthful joy and optimism without
being
identified with it. Then are we simple, once more, and
things
are simple once again. The old Buddhist adage is here
proved:
in the beginning of the path to Enlightenment houses are
houses,
trees are trees; in the middle of the way, houses are no
longer
houses and trees are no longer trees; in the end, houses are
once
again houses and trees, trees. But they are simple again in a
new
way, redemption has occurred.
The man
is saddled on the ox's back, he is firmly riding, feeling
in
contact with his instinctual life and that of the divine itself. His
eyes
are not fixed on earth however. He is free. He is free to follow
heaven
or earth. He is not just focussed on "gain and loss" as are
the
rest of us. Connected with the nature of the divine itself, he
will no
longer be enticed.
The
poem tells us that he rides the animal and finds his way
home.
Is it not the animal itself which leads the way? This is the
special
wonder of this picture and these words. After all the
struggle,
the bridling and taming and disciplining of the
animal, it
is the
ox itself which leads the way. The boy might say, "Look, Ma,
no
hands!" The man now rides the ox, but is led by him. He only
plays
his tuneful flute, he stays in touch with his feeling life and
expresses
it as best he can; direction is left to the Self, to the nature
that he
spent so much time relating to and taming.
Why are
we so awed by this picture of "no hands?" Because we
in the
West have had a very different tradition of dealing with the
animal,
of coping with and expressing our animal natures. Think
of our
tradition of bull-fighting. True, it is a spectacle and a ritual,
not a
sport -- as some misguided souls see it.
True also that the
entire
performance has the passion of self-discipline and relationship,
just as
we see here in the oxherding pictures. Most importantly
true is
the fact that the Matador and the bull are in such intimate
relationship
that at the final moment, when the bull is being killed,
we know
that deep secret shared only by the sincere participators
therein:
that man and animal are one, that Matador and bull share
the
same reality, that as the one kills the other, he also is
killinglsacrificing
himself. In this, therefore, and in the bullfight
whose
repeated presentation is the last great ritual having its
roots
in the Mediterranean past, we hear the echo of self-mastery
and
self-sacrifice, the virtues of the taming of Western passion.
We may
recall the religion of Mithraism, that great spiritual
direction
embraced by the Roman soldiers of antiquity and the
nearly
successful rival of Christianity in the early part of the aeon.
Mithra,
the hero, as Cumont tells us in The Mysteries of Mithra,
(1956)
sacrifices the bull of his own nature and carries a cornucopia
of its
riches upon his back. Deep and meaningful is this, but how
different
from the Zen portrayal! In our Western tradition The
King
Must Die (Renault, 1962) and the bull must die, but in the East,
the
bull lives, he guides us and is the basis of our being.
Perhaps
this difference is an enlightening one for us all, in the
East
and West. Until the modern age, China and Japan turned
within,
sought perfection and differentiation in their own culture
and
time, valuing the taming of their own nature. We in the West,
with
our predatory birds (eagles) and our sacrificed gods and
animals,
turned our captured energy into conquest, victory over
others
and the world, and into subduing nature itself. Knowledge
of the
world is our achievement, not knowledge of the Self. World
conversion
is our success, not a transformation of Self. But, in the
most
modern day, all this, too, is over. There is a cry to end the
bull-sacrifice
in the West, an end to missionarizing, an end to
conquest,
and a turning toward Self-transformation. And, in the
East,
there is a dying of the tradition of Self-mastery and a turning
to the
outer achievements and "isms" of the West. They are even
beginning
to defeat the West at its own power game. So it is that a
Westerner
turns to oxherding pictures in awe and appreciation.
Christianity
may have failed to missionarize the world, but
science
has succeeded in doing so. Some say that Buddhism may be
dying
in the Orient, but it is alive and well in California and
Europe.
In the end, we learn from each other, and perhaps the
synthesis
is now building.
But let
us return to the picture and the words. The heart of the
man is
filled with a joy indescribable and, if we look at the ox, do
we not
also see a smile, a head tilted upward, as if listening to the
ditty
being sung, the tune being played? The joy of the ox, in
harmony
with the man, is as great as the latter feels. In this is the
true
union, in this relationship is the reconciliation, the resolution
of all
our conflicts, all our disharmony. Would that we could know,
as the
seeker now knows.
Picture VII: The Ox Forgotten,
Leaving the Man Alone
The dharmas are one and the ox is symbolic.
When you know
that what you need is not the snare or set
net but the hare or
fish, it is like gold separated from the
dross, it is like the moon
rising out of the clouds. The one ray of
light serene and
penetrating shines even before days of
creation.
Riding on the animal, he is at last back in
his
home
Where lo! the ox is no more; the man alone
sits serenely.
Thought the red sun is high up in the sky,
he
is still quietly dreaming.
Under a straw-thatched roof are his whip
and rope idly lying.
The
poem here both carries us onward, and links us back with
picture
VI, whereas poems of earlier pictures carried us beyond
the
image at hand. After the fulfillment of "coming home on the
ox's
back," the picture shows us where his true home is, atop the
mountain.
The mountain is a symbol of his aloneness, having
achieved
a "high-point" in his individuationlenlightenment. He
has
"attained," as the Hindus are fond of saying.
The
poem tells us, "lo! the ox is no more." What does it mean
that
the ox is no more? Is he dead, vanished, or gone out of sight?
None of
these, since he is now integrated into the man, or
transformed
into the red sun or moon rising out of the clouds. The
ox is
"forgotten."
Kaku-an's
words tell us that the ox is symbolic (and this known
in the
fifteenth century!) and that the dharmas (justice, law,
practice)
are one, namely unified. We thus learn that our struggle
with
instinct, with desire, with passion, with gain and loss was all a
vehicle,
a method, perhaps even a"snareU or "set net." All this was
so real
when we were struggling, but it is just illusion now, as we
sit
peacefully, contentedly, serenely upon the mountain top. We
know,
now, that theories, techniques, even images, are but
vehicles
and what we want is the "hare" or the "fish," the reality
of
the
experience in its definiteness, concreteness. When we know
this,
it is gold from dross, alchemical transformation of the valued
part
from all the surround. East meets West in transformation and
symbol.
Suzuki
tells us that "picture V11 completes the process of selfdiscipline;
it marks
the culmination of a struggle that has been
going
on even after the awakening of a new consciousness." Now
we
understand that "coming home" was not enough; "being
home"
was necessary.
Our man
sits in meditation, even prayer, perhaps with his
clasped
hands before him, as he gazes up, at that "moon rising out
of the
clouds." What meditative joy in his reveries! What peace
emerges
in that mountain eyrie! His view is immense from that
mountain,
from that paper-thin walled cottage, in that deliciously
sensitive
oriental landscape. He sits alone, serenely. No more whip
nor
rope, no more discipline and effort and struggle. He has
forgotten
the ox, forgotten his struggle, forgotten even what he
was
searching for. Here it is.
But
still, the red sun is high up in the sky, consciousness shines
brightly
around him. He is still quietly dreaming; he is still at one
with
the dream world, the inner world, as a friend, not a foe. The
consciousness
that now obtains is like theUone ray of light serene
and
penetrating"; it is the consciousness that was there always,
"even
before creation." He once more connects us with the Selfpotential,
the
face before we were born, and we knoiv it now as a
Self-actual,
as a presence. The Self is no longer projected on the
ox, as
we would say. Neither is there a need for the animal kind of
awareness.
This has its counterpart in the Kundalini
picture series,
(Avalon,
1958). In each of the lower chakra representations, there
is an
animal quality: an elephant, a kind of crocodile-devourer, a
ram, a
gazelle-like creature. Finally, at the level of the throat, the
elephant
which began at the muladhara (tail end first as happens
also in
the oxherding series), becomes transformed into a white
elephant,
and then at the forehead, where the one-eyed Ajna
reins,
there is no animal at all! I think it was Jung who somewhere
remarked
that this would mean that this level of consciousness
does
not require a bodily basis at all, it is psyche transcending. So it
is
here.
Sun and
moon are also present, those polar twins of the
alchemical
series, and the mountain, too. Individuation continues.
The
process is not yet over.
Picture VIII: The Ox and Man Both Gone Out of Sight
All confusion is set aside, and serenity
alone prevails: even the
idea of holiness does not obtain. He does
not linger about
where the Buddha is, and as to where there
is no Buddha he
speedily passes by. When there exists no
form of dualism,
even a thousand-eyed one fails to detect a
loophole. A holiness
before which birds offer flowers is but a
farce.
All is empty -- the whip, the rope, the man,
and the ox:
Who can ever survey the vastness of heaven?
Over the furnace burning ablaze, not a
flake
of snow can fall:
When this state of things obtains, manifest
is the spirit of the ancient master.
What
more might we in the West expect from such a process? In
Picture
VI, we found serenity and oneness with our animal nature
and
union with the longed-for God-head itself. In picture V11 we
went
even beyond the wonder of instinct and found serenity and
stillness.
But now, "serenity alone prevails; even the idea of
holiness
does not obtain." A truly Eastern notion this: there is
development
beyond the holy, a condition in which there is no
longer
any worship nor seeking at all, not even after the divine!
We no
longer seek the Buddha, and quickly move away from
where
there is no Buddha. A true selflessness is to be found there,
in our
Western sense, where even desire for the divine is
sacrificed.
Suzuki
quotes for us in connection with this picture, a Western
mystic,
Meister Eckhart, in which the latter says (p. 202, 1964),
"He
alone hath true spiritual poverty who wills nothing, knows
nothing,
desires nothing." Even the desire to fulfil1 the will of God
is an
obstacle here. Now we understand the statement: "serenity
alone
prevails." When not even I am serene, then "serenity alone
prevails."
The ego is gone. Not only the ox, but now the man, too,
has
"gone out of sight."
It is
this condition that Suzuki refers to when he states that a
second
awakening has taken place. What now obtains is absolute
nothingness,
symbolized by a empty circle. But this circle is not an
ordinary
one. It has no limits, because it is not circumscribed; it has
no
boundaries, and no actual center. Its center, really, is everywhere.
At this
point, we are informed, we enter ontology and find the
mystery
of the inward way (p. 200): "In spite of its eternally being
empty
(sunya), [it is] in possession of infinite values. It never
exhausts
itself." For us in the West, that definition is the mystic
one of
God. God is a circle whose center is everywhere and
circumference
nowhere, the mystic informs us. So here East and
West
meet, not in the definition of the divine, but in the
experience
of it. All numbers meet in the number beyond number:
zero,
the circle.
How are
we to understand this from a psychological point of
view?
Jung was fond of commenting that the Eastern way of
saying
that the ego is totally obliterated made no sense to him.
Who was
it, he asked, that experienced this divine, if not the ego?
If Jung
seems to be right, how can we reply to the statement that
when
there is no form of dualism, no one, not even a thousandeyed
one,
can find a loophole? There needs to be some observing
consciousness,
someone to report the experience, or else it does
not
happen. The resolution of this apparent paradox, it seems to
me,
comes from the poem itself.
"All
is empty," says the poet, "the whip, the rope, the man and
the
ox." All partake of sunya emptiness, and none is more or less
important
than the other. All, in short, are part of a whole. This
whole
itself is nothing and everything, as is the sunya which is an
ever-replenishing
source and is also empty in itself. Without all
the
parts, the whole is nothing; without the whole, the part is
nothing.
Together, then, the part and whole are everything and
nothing.
Truly. Translated into psychological thought, we can say
that
the symbol of wholeness, the Self, is the mandala, the circle as
here.
This Self contains the ego, as well as the rest. There is,
therefore,
no distinction between Self and ego, between whole
and
part, and that here, at last, as Suzuki says, comes the "second
awakening,"
where the relativization of the ego -- and the
individual
Self, too! -- occurs in such a way as to say
that all are
part of
the larger and largest whole.
"Who
can ever survey the vastness of heaven?" the poet says,
and
this the largest whole. Who, indeed, except heaven itself.
Psychologically,
we would say that heaven, or the Self, is doing the
surveying,
and the ego is its vehicle. When there is no distinction
between
ego and Self, not even holiness occurs. That power of
creativity
of the blazing furnace melts any possibility of its
dimming.
And when the ego is truly in service of that wholeness,
"manifest
is the spirit of the ancient master." One might say that
at this
point the original spirit of the process of Enlightenment
shows
itself: ego and Self are one.
What is
not shown in this picture, and what perhaps is the most
difficult
part of the process, is the way to the dethronement of
that
ego, that changing of the center of consciousness -- as Jung
would
say, from ego to Self. That process would entail another
series
of pictures with the ox now representing the ego, rather
than
the instincts. That battle is a much more crucial one for
Westerners
than Easterners, as Jung has shown us, since the
Orient
has tended, in the past, to hold a less distinct consciousness
and to
connect with the Self at the expense of the development of
individuality
-- at least in our Western sense.
Kawai, the Japanese
Jungian
analyst (1981), has validated this understanding.
For us,
in the West, we are continually taken over by one
archetype
after another when we undertake the journey, and
often
when we do not even start. Inflation is a natural consequence,
Jung
tells us (in the Two Essays, 1953)
but it is our peculiar suffering
all the
same. Therefore, to come to this condition of wholeness, of
the
mandala in which ego and Self are one, is a great achievement
indeed!
Many may draw mandalas and copy gurus, but this
activity,
like the holiness before which birds offer flowers, is but a
farce.
The achievement requires a lifetime (lifetimes, in the
Eastern
sense.)
If we
try to go deeper into this difference of East and West in the
process
of seeking Enlightenment, we can do no better than
examine
the vehicles. For the East, the method is meditation and
the
achievement of mindlessness, no content, nothingness. For
the
West, the method is prayer, or in psychotherapy, active
imagination,
the passion of relationship and union, as we have said
before.
Going
back one picture, to number VII, may give us a clue. The
poem
therein speaks of no longer needing theUsnare" but the hare
itself.
One can look upon this from the methodological point of
view
and understand the snare or set-net as the technique of
meditation
itself. Once one has had the experience of Self, then
meditation
-- even the great and wonderful
vehicle of the way -- is
itself
no longer necessary. When you have the animal, when you
have
the reality, then the method for achieving it is no longer
needed.
It is
at the point of the experience, as we have mentioned earlier,
that
East and West meet. Meditation is the Eastern way, and
particularly
the meditation of one-pointedness; whereas imagination
is the
Western way. Both lead to union, and when this is achieved,
differences
vanish. But the methods also include the goal: meditation
with
mind-lessness and ego-lessness on the way makes it easier
for
union at the end; imagination with consciousness and discrimination
on the
way makes union more difficult at the end.
The
wonder is that what emerges is so much alike: clarity,
serenity,
joy, ego-lessness (in the sense of non ego-centric). Yet
we know
that Enlightenment, however vast, is always only partial
when
one remains in the mortal body. There is always a new ox to
find
and to tame, a new circle to come to. As long as we are alive,
our
wholeness is relative, and it is only for moments or periods
where
"not a flake of snow can fall." The via longisima is life-long.
This
means that the ego is always once more working, acting and
being
acted upon. The ox and man, though gone out of sight,
generally
come back in another process or path, brief or long. But
once
the process is undergone, one is never quite the same, the
memory
is always there. The "face before you were born," when
experienced
in this life, can always recall us, remind us, even when
everything
else is empty.
Picture IX: Returning to the Origin, Back to the Source
From the very beginning, pure and
immaculate, the man has
never been affected by defilement. He
watches the growth of
things, while himself abiding in the
immovable serenity of
nonassertion. He does not identify himself
with the maya-like
transformations (that are going on about
him), nor has he any
use of himself (which is artificiality).
The waters are blue, the
mountains are green; sitting alone, he
observes things undergoing
changes.
The return to the Origin, to be back at the
Source -- already a false step this!
Far better is it to stay at home, blind and
deaf, and without much ado;
Sitting in the hut, he takes no cognizance
of
things outside,
Behold
the streams flowing -- whither nobody
knows;
and the flowers vividly red -- for
whom
are they?
How can
one go beyond the mandala, the condition where ego
and
Self are one? Indeed, there are oxherding series, as we have
seen
(and as is shown in this book), where the process ends in just
such a
condtion; sunyata prevails, emptiness and fullness in the
circle
is the end of all. Yet Kaku-an, and not he alone, shows us
that
there is more to the process, that the condition of emptiness
and
even fullness, does not end the cycle.
What do
we see in this next stage? An image of nature itself, a
tree in
its blossoming and its twisted trunk, almost racked. In it,
however,
are two more circles, now embedded in the very trunk of
that
tree. Could this be the sequel, intended or not? That Nature is
beyond
the abstraction of the circle? In any event, that is how I
read
this further stage in the development of the process. I see the
fullness
and life in the blossoms, the deadness and emptiness in
the
circles of the trunk. The opposites are once more united in the
life of
the tree.
This
symbol of the tree is also one that transcends East and West.
For us,
in the West, there is, most importantly, the Tree of Life in
our own
main sutra, the Bible, reaching a differentiation and
elaboration
in the Jewish mysticism of the Kabbalah. That same
Tree of
Life was cut off from us, "in the beginning," when we fell
out of
paradise. A sword of fire separated us from it. But
mysticism
tells us that we can come once again to that tree when
we
discover, as Jesus also tells us in the later book, that "ye are
Gods,"
that God and person are one. So, we have the techniques of
the
climbing of the Tree of Life, in Western mysticism and the
occult
(Regardie, 1969, 1984).
But the
tree is also a world tree, and the tree of Hinduism, thus
transcending
East and West. That tree, with its roots going deeply
into
the earth and reaching up into heaven is a symbol for our own
individuation
as well. Heroes are born from it; gods die on it; we all
live in
it. So, perhaps, the tree is an even higher form than the
circle.
We reach that circle like the sun and moon themselves,
paradoxically.
We rise in consciousness, yet we fall onto the earth
and
into the play of life in that seamless whole of the tree. The tree
has
blossoms and dead wood, beauty and emptiness; it is a living
symbol
for wholeness.
This is
not the view of Suzuki, however. Once again he thinks
that we
may get a distorted idea from the view of the tree as
Origin
or Source. We might take it as another dualistic statement,
with
the man unattached and watching the maya-like transformations
going
around him. This might be true (p. 200, 1964) in
Sankhya philosophy, "in which the Purusha quietly sits unmoved
and
unconcerned with the Prakrit going
through an infinite series
of
antics."This is far from the case in Zen, Suzuki assures us. In a
very
beautiful and world-loving way, might I say, he asserts the
value
of action:
For the
man will never be found "sitting in his hut." Not only
does he
take cognizance of things going on outside, but he is
the
things, he is the outside and the inside. Nor is he deaf and
blind.
He sees perfectly well even into the interior of an atom
and
explodes with it wherever it may fall regardless of its
effects.
But at the same time he sheds tears over human
ignorance,
over human follies and infirmities; he hastens to
repair
all the damages he produced, he contrives every
possible
method to prevent the recurrence. He is forever kept
busy
doing this, undoing that.
What a
heartfelt commitment to human action! What a profound
realization
that even the Enlightened one is endlessly making
blunders,
causing damage, and must spend half of his time
repairing
the evil he has done personally, as well as mourning and
having
compassion for human folly. One thinks of when and
where
Suzuki said these words. It was in the Switzerland of 1954,
not so
long after the terrible events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Could
not this have been in the backof his mind when he spoke of
not
being deaf and blind, and seeing perfectly well "even into the
interior
of an atom"? I think that Suzuki was quite aware of the
paradox
of human good and evil, in a very personal way, when he
added
that with the explosion of this atom, that the Enlightened
man
"explodes with it wherever it may fall regardless of its
effects."
That he can rise above this experience of evil done to his
people,
yet not be blind to mankind's follies on all sides is great
enough.
To take on his own charge of repairing the damage he has
himself
done puts him into a deep brotherly relationship with the
best
that the West has to offer. Jung, particulary in his profound
vision
of the evil in the divine situation and man's place in it (e.g.
Answer to Job Vol, 11 1952),
is similarly grasped and made aware.
But
perhaps SuzukiJs passion is really less connected with this
picture,
despite its stillness and the non-assertion recommeded by
the
remarks. It seems as if his words are more relevant to picture
X. Indeed,
at the end of his passionate statement, Suzuki says that
the
Enlightened one is "forever kept busy doing this, undoing
that,"
and that this is just what "daubed with mud and ashes"
means.
This "daubedness" belongs to Picture X, to which we shall
turn
shortly. First, however, we should look more kindly at the
words
of Kaku-an in this picture.
Kaku-an
tells us that the man has never been affected by
defilement,
from the very beginning. Here we learn that even the
process
itself may be an illusion. We were never out of harmony at
all, we
never left "home."Not only is it better to be blind and deaf,
and to
stay home and not complain and not have the audacity to
start
on the path to Enlightenment, but even if we think so, we
have
never even left. It is a false step, an illusion to even think so.
What
then, does this mean? Have we not struggled with the
sutras,
found the ox, disciplined him, given him up, sacrificed our
ego,
done all those wonderful and terrible things that have shown
us the
truth?
Apparently
not. The waters are blue, the mountains are green.
"Things
undergo change." Maybe that is the point: changes are
just
happening, even those we think that we are accomplishing.
Even
those changes and efforts perhaps are an illusion of ours: we
think
that we are doing them, accomplishing them, but it is Nature
itself
that is doing them. It is Nature, here shown in the wonderful
tree,
that is expressing itself and we are foolish to think that we
did it,
to chalk up to ourselves such special achievement, egocentric
or not.
The poet hints that the whole process is one of
Nature
itself. Does not this strike at the same wisdom that
alchemy
tells us when it says that it is nature that battles nature, it
is
nature that overcomes nature? Are we not part of that natural
process
of life finding itself, becoming conscious of itself? So that
beyond
the abstraction of the circle and its fulness and emptiness,
a
circle which is not found in nature, is the reality of Nature itself,
in
which that process manifests. In Picture V111 we are told that in
the
circle, "manifest is the spirit of the ancient master." In Picture
IX,
perhaps, we can say "manifest is the spirit of nature, Herself."
In
this, I would think, is the recognition of the feminine
principle
at a deeper level, an appreciation of which must be fully
apprehended
before this process is completed. The circle, indeed,
is a
feminine symbol, showing wholeness at an abstract level; the
tree
brings us into Nature Herself in all Her complexity, and the
seeker
must stay here, in his inwardness until helshe knows this.
Sitting
in the hut, he takes no cognizance of
things
outside,
Behold
the streams flowing -- whither
nobody
knows; and the flowers vividly red -- for
whom
are they?
I would
venture to say that he remains sitting and inward until
he can
behold the streams and the red flowers, without knowing
for
whom or where they go. In so doing, he sees that Nature -- and
he as a
part of Nature -- has its
own Being and aims that he can not
fathom.
In this day before the creation of the theory of evolution,
he can
grasp the wonder of nature, in himself and in life, and find
that he
can not be other than himself, that from the beginning and
in the
middle and in the end, he is himself within the totality of
existence.
It is Nature who is expressing Herself. And that is the
answer
to the koan, for whom are the flowers vividly red? It is for
Nature
Herself.
One
thing remains to be addressed in this picture. It is the
puzzling
statement which follows the understandable, "He does
not
identify himself with the maya-like transformations (that are
going
on around him). . ."After
this comes, "nor has he any use of
himself
(which is artificiality)." What does this mean, to have no
use of
one's self? Is it a repeat of the notion that the ego itself is
valueless,
just a part, like all other parts of the whole? Or is
something
else intended?
A
possible answer may be found in the Zen story of the tree
which remained
in a forest when all others were cut down. When
this
tree was queried as to how it was able to survive when the rest
were
cut down, it replied that it "had no use for itself." All the
other
trees were beautiful, had good wood in them, were needed
for
houses, etc., but this tree was neither beautiful nor valuable. It
was
"unworthy" the tale says. It was of no value to anyone, no
threat
to anyone, unworthy, and so it survived. The deeper
meaning
we can guess was that it was of value only to itself. Thus
does
this tree coincide perhaps with the tree of our picture, it is
worthy
only to itself. So does the man have no use of himself. Is he
of
value only to himself?
This
reminds one of the statementJnWhat others thinkof me is
none of
my business," -- another
variation of this paradox of being
of no
use and full of value at the same time. Such truths are
relative
to time and person: balm or poison, depending upon the
moment.
That
such a paradox can be true in the transpersonal dimension,
larger
than that of the personal existence, is suggested, once
more,
by the fact that it is a tree here that is portrayed at the
highest
level, higher even than the circle. The whole transpersonal
character
of the transformation process is thereby portrayed, just
as it
is in the Rosarium pictures, where the entire series begins with
symbols
of nature -- sun, moon, snake, etc. -- along with a well or
fountain.
Somewhere we learn through these two portrayals of
the EnlightenmentlIndividuation
process that it is not for ourselves
("no
use") but for nature (God), that we undertake it. The paradox
unravelled,
of course, is that when we are a conscious part of this
wholeness,
sharing that work of transformation, we are blessed.
When
East and West meet in this experience, therefore, we can
understand
even the highest paradox of all: God and no-God, is
true.
Picture X: Entering
the City with Bliss-Bestowing Hands
His thatched cottage gate is closed, and
even the wisest know
him not. No glimpses of his inner life are
to be caught; for he
goes on his own way without following the
steps of the
ancient sages.
Carrying a gourd he goes out into the
market, leaning against
a staff he comes home. He is found in
company with
winebibbers and butchers, he and they are
all converted into
Buddhas.
Bare-chested and barefooted, he comes out
into the market place;
Daubed with mud and ashes, how broadly he
smiles!
There is no need for the miraculous power
of the gods,
For he touches, and lo! the dead trees are
in full bloom.
We come
now, as Suzuki says (p. 201,1964), to "the final stage
of the
drama." For Suzuki, the final stage is that the cottage is not
only
shut, but cottage and gate are gone. No one can locate where
the
Enlightened one is. "Yet he is ubiquitous; he is seen in the
market
place, he is seen on farms, he is seen with the children,
with
men and women, he is seen with the birds and animals,
among
the rocks and mountains. Anything he touches grows into
full
bloom, even the dead are awakened."
In short,
the final stage of the drama for Suzuki is one in which
the
Enlightened one returns to the world and ordinary man, but
has
bliss-bestowing hands. He contrasts this bare-chested and
barefooted
figure of our picture with that of Christ in the Last
Judgment
painted by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. The
latter,
says Suzuki, is almost impossible to approach, much less
touch,
for he is majestically and vigorously passing out judgments.
"If
you come near him, you would surely be torn to pieces and
thrown
into eternal fire." This is not the case with the Bodhisattva,
in
Picture X, who is
so genial. What a difference, it seems, in the
two
images of the Enlightened One in the world! Perhaps Suzuki
does
not understand (or understands too well!) our Western
struggle
with duality, since that same Christ, full of judgment in
the
Apocalypse of John (like his Father in the Old Testament!), is
also
the Lamb. We, too, have our variety of images of Enlightenment
and
service of the Holy One. And we can understand very well this
Easterner
contrasting the Zen image of the Enlightened figure
with
our Western version, in which our version comes out rather
second-best.
The
difference, perhaps, is in the degree and quality of
humanity
which emerges. Our usual Western image of the God-
Man may
be all too kind, redemptive, and far from ordinary man.
He is
not subject to the the passions that plague us. He longs to be
with
the ordinary man, but one has the feeling that even though
he
seeks the company of "winebibers and butchers" he is unlikely
to get
drunk or enjoy women in a carnal way. The center of the
Eastern
Enlightened one, as Suzuki tells us, is in the belly, he is a
belly-man.
Our Jesus, on the other hand, centers in the heart; He
is a
God-man of love. Belly-centerdness is quite instinctive, as
Suzuki
tells us, and grounds itself in the earth, in life. Our Christ-
consciousness, on the other hand, as manifested in Jesus and in
love,
is in life, but looks toward heaven, toward the transcendence
of life
and death. Both images have "bliss-bestowing," healing
hands,
but our Zen figure is almost fat, whereas Christ is usually
portrayed
as lean, even'gaunt. No cross of the suffering of the
opposites
prevails in the Enlightened one -- the
sine qua non of the
God-man.
Instead he carries a big cornucopia on his back, an
unending
source of bliss. Does this carrying of the cornucopia
hearken
back to the Mithra figure of Western antiquity, who also
carried
the sacrificed bull upon his back, equally laden with riches?
This
may be the brother of our Christ figure, who remained more
with
the symbol of conflict and resolution, and thus has less of
Eastern
wholeness than he might. After all, He must unite being
God and
Man, whereas our Zen hero, has "no need for the
miraculous
power of the gods," nor, we might add, is he a god,
either!
Other
differences are apparent in the carrying of the gourd, a
symbol of
sunyata, emptiness. Yet Suzuki
quotes the great Christian
Mystic,
Meister Eckhart, in saying (p. 202, 1964):
A man
shall become truly poor and as free from his creature
will as
he was when he was born. And I say unto you, by the
eternal
truth, that as long as ye desire to fulfil1 the will of God,
and
have any desire after eternity and God, so long are ye not
truly
poor. He alone hath true spiritual poverty-who- wills
nothing,
knows nothing, desires nothing.
Eckhart's
Enlightened man is close to the Zen man in this. The
figure
here carries only a staff which, according to Suzuki,
indicates
that he carries no extra property at all, for he "knows
that
the desire to possess is the curse of human life." So, our two
figures
are alike, yet different, as like and different as the
experience
of East and West.
From
the psychological point-of-view, we see two ways of
viewing
and experiencing the Self. In the West we have much to
learn
from this Eastern representation. When we are with our
smallness,
we can see ourselves serving the Self-within as our
larger
totality, like Christ, the God-within. When we are with our
"bigness”
(or ”smallness in another way) we can see ourselves in
the
undivided totality of the Buddha-man here represented.
Luckily,
we need not choose, only experience.
Let us
look a bit more at other aspects of this tenth picture. We
note,
first all, that the figure shown here is no longer the youth of
the
early pictures. Neither is he the "man" who looked the same
but was
transformed into spiritual manhood by picture VI. We
now see
an old man, and realize that this ten-picture process is a
life-time
path, not a single event. To finally arrive at this
destination
(and we should not even have started out or thought
to
leave, as we are reminded in Picture IX), apparently requires not
only
meditation, study, and life-experience, but also just takes a
long
time! This surely can be attested to by the poor souls (all of
US),
East and West, who have been on that path for lifetimes!
Why should
it take so long?-It just does, one is inclined to
answer,
in a Zen way, perhaps. But another answer comes from
the
realization that the resolution of such profound opposites
entails
work not only in the complex nature of the human being,
but, as
we have said before, in the paradoxical nature of the divine
principle
itself. It is this principle -- as we
experience it in image,
thought
and deed -- that is going through evolution
and slow
change.
As if to underline this fact, our final picture once more
gives
us the symbol of the tree, as it did in Picture IX. Now the tree
frames
the Enlightened one, and its blossoms go forward to the
other
person in the picture, the young man.
Much
can be made about this new appearance. All through
these
pictures there has been either one boy or man, or no-one.
Now we
suddenly find two figures, the Enlightened one of age,
and
this youth meeting him in pleasure and joy. Is it not close to
the
truth to conjecture that this young man is another version of
our
original seeker, as he looked in the first picture? And that a
function
of our Enlightened one is, indeed, to help just such
creatures
as he was in the beginning to advance on their way? So it
seems
to me. The student becomes Master, and instructs new
students.
Thus is the process carried onwards.
The
Tree of Life covers both seeker and teacher, and the long
path is
like nature itself, slowly growing with concentric rings of
development,
showing hardness and softness, resistance and
flexibility,
sweet-smellingness and decay. Both seekers, master
and
student, carry emblems of that same Tree: the one his staff of
chosen
poverty of spirit; the other his ordinary staff carrying his
few
possessions, symbol of his actual poverty in the same area. A
happy
meeting and a happy union. "He and they are all converted
into
Buddhas."
It
remains for us to contrast this last picture of the ten with the
last
picture of Jung's Rosarium series. In the latter, there is a
hermaphroditic
figure who represents the union of King of
Queen,
a single figure combining all that has been achieved. In the
beginning
was only the vessel, the bath, the well. All through the
middle
there was the pair of King and Queen, opening, uniting,
struggling,
dying. At the end, there is the Empress, the union of
male
and female, with the accent on the feminine. In the
oxherding
series we began with a person. This person was joined
by the
animal, in which there was struggle and resolution. Then
the
animal was gone, the person was gone, nature remained. At
the end
there is achievement (the Enlightened one), and relationship
(the
student, the others). It seems to me that again we discover the
contrast
of the methods, East and West. In the East, aloneness is
the
way, meditation the method, and, in the end, relationship with
others.
In the West, the vessel is relationship itself and the
capacity
to stand alone is the achievement. There is a useful
complementarity
of the two, it seems to me. The same aloneness,
however,
ultimately adheres to both. "He goes on his way without
following
the steps of the ancient sages," is said of our Master, and
so can
it be said of the Western Master. Easy to proclaim, hard to
attain
or deserve.
All the
same, when the "end" comes, the "dead trees are in full
bloom,"
and we experience the "bliss-bestowing hands" of such a
person,
such a moment, such a relationship. What is not stated
here,
but is said by Suzuki in the last picture, as we noted, is that
the
Enlightened one still does damage and still tries to repair the
damage
that has been done, his own or that of others. "He is
forever
kept busy doing this, undoing that."So, then, we are in the
right
company when we are with winebibbers and butchers, for
such
are we, too.
Epilogue
What
remains to be said after this all-too-brief yet "noisy"
Western
peregrination through the oxherding series? First of all,
what
wants to be said is a statement of thanks to Kaku-an and to
Suzuki
for their enormous gifts to us in the West of these
enchanted
pictures, poems and commentaries. In these days of
psychic
disintegration and breakdown of society, we are deeply
indebted
to those ancient representations of Eastern wisdom
which
can illuminate our individual paths and give us solace to
know
that many of our problems in such a quest were already seen
and
known in different climes, cultures and religions. The unique
clarity
of Kaku-an's words and pictures are especially Enlightening.
We have
seen, more than once, how this series complements the
understanding
of individuation as portrayed in the Rosarium
series,
interpreted
by Jung. The two series together high-light the
wisdom
of the one against the other and bring into relief what
each
culture or way has achieved. The two are truly complementary
and one
hopes that this comparison contributes to the further
marriage
between the spirits of East and West.
Secondly,
the very portrayal of the individuation process in
both
sets has perforce cast some reflection on the surrounding
society
and cultural spirit. The question arises as to what this
individuation
process means for the culture itself. Jung, in the
epilogue
to his discussion of the transference in the Rosarium
series,
says: (par. 539, 1946):
The
symbols of the circle and the quaternity, the hallmarks of
the
individuation process, point back, on the one hand, to the
original
and primitive order of human society, and forward on
the
other to an inner order of the psyche. It is as though the
psyche
were the indispensable instrument in the reorganization
of a civilized community as opposed to the
collectivities which
are so much in favour today, with their
aggregations of halfbaked
mass-men. This type of organization has a
meaning
only if the human material it purports to
organize is good for
something. But the mass-man is good for
nothing -- he is a
mere particle that has forgotten what it is
to be human and has
lost its soul. What our world lacks is the psychic connection; and
no clique, no community of interests, no
political party, and
no State will ever be able to replace this.
It is therefore small
wonder that it was the doctors and not the
sociologists who
were the first to feel more clearly than
anybody else the true
needs of man, for, as psychotherapists,
they have the most
direct dealings with the sufferings of the
soul.
Since
Jung's day, a quarter of a century and more ago, the
cultural
breakdown has continued and the "isms" and cliques have
increased.
There is no indication that his hope for a community
based
on the psychic connection has gained ground either. As I
have
pointed out elsewhere (Spiegelman 1984), there is no
apparent
increase in connectedness among religious communities
or even
psychological communities, for that matter. Jungian
societies
and clubs, for example, are no more "soul" communities
than
any of our traditional groups and societies, and suffer the
same
back-biting, gossip, power-struggles, etc. that we are
accustomed
to in other groups.
Jung's
hope was for the individual dealing with his own soul,
withdrawing
the projection of his shadow, and seeing to his own
integration
and wholeness. Both of our picture-series show us
how
this is done and also show that society is, perforce, involved.
The
oxherding series ends in a return to society and a full
participation
in ordinary life. The Rosarium pictures not only
suggest
that the individuation process requires partners (the
couple),
but Jung asserts that this process is not even possible
without
it (par. 445 ff, 1946). Kinship libido, (the necessity for
close
ties), and endogamous union (the need to integrate the
opposites
spiritually and internally), are of equal importance, says
Jung,
and neither can happen without the other.
Our
pictures, though, show the Western individual being whole
and
alone, while our Eastern series show a return to society.
Eastern
society, perhaps, has experienced slightly less disintegration
than
the West, if we use crime rates, wars, expansionism,
revolution
and the like as measures, but they are not very far
behind
us. Are we to conclude that only the continual work of the
individual
on himself is of value, as some Jungians aver? The fact
that
projection continues so forcefully among Jungians suggests
that
the unconscious is "trying" indeed to separate people, as well
as
connect them, so that the evidence would favor that hypothesis:
we are
compelled to differentiate by the thrust of the unconscious
itself,
which makes for separation, through misunderstanding,
and
through the process of enemy-formation. We would not be
ready,
then, from the apparent evidence, for this newer society or
group
with "soul-connection."
My own
experience would tend to agree with the previous
formulation,
however painful it seems. Not only ongoing groups
and
societies, but even those formed with the express intention of
building
the "new world" of psychological understanding or soulconnection
routinely
fail. I would think, then, that it is probably
too
soon to even speculate about that society of the future in
which
soul-connection would have primacy, along with the value
of
individuation and Enlightenment as a path. All that we can do is
tend to
our own process, which, perforce, thrusts us back into life,
as
Suzuki so beautifully expresses. I would add, however, that
nature,
with its deep and powerful instinct of kinship-libido, will
not
stand still for this continual disintegration and that She will
experiment
with us all, in the form of group-conflicts, and in the
construction
of new situations. Else what is the meaning of
picture
number X of the
oxherding series and number 1 of the
Rosarium
series?
As I write
these lines, I
sit in Los Angeles in the Summer of 1984
and
note that the Olympic Games. held in this city, seem to be just
such an
experimental ground. The upsurge of joy and patriotism
experienced
by many millions accross this country as the flaming
torch
was carried from state to state and passed from hand to
hand,
startled almost everyone. No such feeling for this country
had
been expressed since World War 11. Yet this patriotism is in
connection
with a non-warlike event in which nations of the
world
participate and both individual excellence and group pride
are at
stake. I think that this event is just such a living symbol of
what
the psyche may be trying to produce. By this I mean that the
psyche
is trying to form a world-community, which many have
realized
for a long time, and which was visually seen in thet'planet
earth"
experience when the first astronauts landed on the moon.
This
world-community, apparently, is both a whole (of nations)
and
separate (glorification of difference, of separation of cultures).
But it
also values supremely the performance of the individual,
going
beyond all nations, states and groupings. It is a union via the
flesh,
(sport), at this point, and successful, despite the politicization
and the
withdrawal of nations over the last few Olympics. Yet
those
who withdraw suffer, not the participants, and even
terrorism
can not kill the event. The arts, too, are included, in the
cultural
Olympics and destined, I believe, to have an even greater
role in
future celebrations.
It is
striking to me that conscious political attempts at unity, e.g.
the
United Nations, should be corrupted and almost defeated -- as
was the
League of Nations -- by
parochialism, selfishness and
narrow-mindedness,
whereas the Olympics, begun earlier and
resuming
an ancient ritual, should both grow and gain in stature.
It is
tending to produce world-brotherhoodlsisterhood itself, as
we can
see from the increased participation of all races and both
sexes.
So
there is at least some evidence of the psyche's attempt at
producing
social structures in which both the individual and the
group
are valued. But the Olympics is no fosterer of consciousness
nor
Enlightenment, and we must remain quite alone in that
quest,
just as the Masters of East and West have told us. We take
solace
in our process, however, and find our kinship libido where it
occurs,
as an unexpected and valued meeting of individuals, both
in the
concrete world and in the world of the spirit where the inner
temple,
church, and synagogue reign, and where the Rosarium and
the
Oxherding Pictures have both their origin and their goal.
REFERENCES
Avalon,
Arthur, The Serpent Power, Ganesh
& Co., Madras, 1958
(original
edition, 1918), 508 pp. plus approx. 100 Sanskrit pp).
Cumont,
Franz, The Mysferies of Mifhra, Dover,
New York, 1956
(original
French edition 1902), 239 pp.
Doran,
Robert M., S.J. Jungian Psychology and Christian
Spirituality
(in three parts) Review for
Religious, Vol. 38, 19791 pp.
497-510;
Vol. 5, pp. 742-752; Vol. 6 pp. 857-866.
Fierz,
Linda, Psychological Reflections on
the Fresco Series of the Villa of the
Mysferies in Pompeii, Kristine
Mann Library, A.P.C. of New York,
1957,190
pp.
von
Franz, Marie-Louise, Introduction to
the Infeprefafion of Fairy
Tales, Spring Publications, 1970. 155 pp.
Jung,
C.G. Two Essays on Analytical
Psychology, Collected Works
Vol. 7,
1953. Original 1918 & sequel
editions.
Jung,
C.G. Psychology of the Transference,
in Collected Works, Vol.
16.
Original, 1946.
Jung,
C.G. Answer to lob, in
Collected Works, Vol. 11. Original,
1943.
Jung,
C.G. Mysferium Conjunctionis. Vol.
14. Original 1954.
Kawai,
Hayao. "Violence in the Home." lapan Quarterly. Vol.
XXIII,
No. 3, July-September
1981, pp. 370-377
Miyuki,
Mokusen. Various articles, passim, in
this book. 1985.
Regardie,
Israel. The Complete Golden Dawn
System of Magic. Falcon
Press. 1104 pp.
Phoenix Az. 1984.
Regardie,
Israel. The Tree of Life. Samuel
Weiser, Inc., NY. 1969.
Original
1932. 285 pp.
Renault,
Mary. The King Must Die. Pantheon
Books, New York,
1962.
Standard Dictionary of Folklore, edited
by Maria Leach. 2 vols. Funk
and
Wagnall, New York, 1949,1196 pp.
Spiegelman,
J. Marvin.
The Tree: Tales in Psycho-mythology.
Falcon
Press.
Phoenix Az. 1982. Original 1975. 464 pp.
Spiegelman,
J. Marvin.
The Quest. Falcon Press.
Phoenix Az.
1984.175 pp.
Spiegelman,
J. Marvin.
The Love. To be
published.
Spiegelman,
J. Marvin.
"Psychotherapy and the Clergy: Fifty
Years Later."]ournal of Religion and Health, 1984, Vol. 23, No.1,
pp.
19-32.
Suzuki,
D.T. Manual of Zen Buddhism. Grove
Press, New York,
1960. Original
1935. 192 pp.
Suzuki,
D.T. "Awakening of a New Consciousness in Zen," in
Man and Transformation, Papers
from Eranos, edited by Joseph
Campbell,
Vol 5, Routledge
and Kegan Paul, London, 1964.
Original
1954.
White,
Victor. God and the Unconscious. World
Pub. Co., New York,
1961. Original
1952. 287 pp.
THE RONIN
A Fictional
Portrayal Of
The oxherdkg Pictures
By J. Marvin Spiegelman
PREFATORY
NOTE
The Ronin, at times addresses himself to
the Knight and the
Arab, whom he discovers at the end of his
journey, at the Tree of
Life. In this book, it is not essential to
know their tales, but for
those who are interested see, The Tree: Tales in Psycho-Mythology
(Falcon Press, 1982).
I
I am a
Ronin -- or rather, I have been a Ronin,
and am no more. A
Ronin,
my friends, in our language, is a warrior, a samurai who
has no
lord. He wanders in search -- because
a man without a
master,
a warrior without a lord, a disciple without a guru, what is
he? Do
not answer, for you two men, Sir Knight and Sir Arab,
already
know what I mean. I can tell this by your stories, although
I am
puzzled by much of what you say.
I only
know that I am here with you now, in that place that is
called
Eden for you, Sir Knight, and Paradaizo for you, Sir Arab,
and
that, in truth it is the same for me -- although
we call it "The
Pure
Land."It is indeed a miracle for us all to be here, as you would
call
it, Sir Knight. I am loathe to call it that myself because the
miraculous
has ilo special place in my view. There is no need for
such a
word since all life is miraculous.
My view
on the matter is expressed by one of our Masters, who
said,
"I do not rely on God; I respect Him." You can see at once, Sir
Knight
and Sir Arab, how we differ.
We have
come together for a purpose, it seems. We have come
here to
understand one another and to embrace one another. This
we can
do only after we have told our stories. I am desirous of
telling
you my tale, but first I must tell you, Sir Knight, and you,
Sir
Arab, some of my reactions to your stories. You, Sir Arab, have
already
done this for the Knight, with your first two parables,
which I
find most interesting. Thus I must tell you my own
reactions,
and then get on with my own tale.
Compared
with my experiences, Sir Knight, yours seem more
complex,
with emotions and divisions which seem different from
my own.
For me, there is only one triangle, not two. My
experience
of myself consists of my "self" with all its faults and
sufferings,
the saving force of the Buddha, and finally, the
experience
or the reality of the Wordless realm: Emptiness
Sunyata,
Suchness, Naturalness; whatever the word. Just one
little
triangle.
I have
a difficult time feeling such symbols as God, Goddesses,
Angels,
Snakes. I understand bits and parts which parallel
Buddhistic
thoughts. Such as the idea of the incompleteness of
God
without man. Amida's Vow, for example. He chose never to
seek
absolute perfection while even one sentient being suffered.
Or
Amida, too, as a parent (because of its emotional meaning, not
metaphysical),
and human beings, his children. But Amida can't be
a
parent without children.
Most of
all, the union of opposites is a central idea in Buddhism.
Actually,
it is the only important idea. There are numerous
opposites
which are stated as: This world is, as is, the Pure Land.
The
world of Birth, Suffering, and Death is, as is, Nirvana.
Defilement
and Ignorance is, as is, the Supreme Understanding.
Man and
the Absolute Truth are, as is, One.
In your
story, Sir Knight, from the Buddhist standpoint, the
snake,
the witch, the goddess, the horse, the forest, the God, the
ocean,
the maiden, the flashes of light, and even you, Oh Knight,
are all
One.
For
you, Sir Arab, I have only compassion. Your way seems
simpler
and more direct to me. Maybe you are more Oriental, like
myself.
I too have had to deal with the animals, as you will see,
though
our solutions are different.
Gentlemen,
it is strange. I feel close to you both because our
goal is
the same and the intensity of our drive is the same. But I
feel
different because you want to know and experience all the
parts
and thus bring them into union, while I go from the
standpoint
of denying everything, even the denial itself.
You
know, I really have nothing to say. Life is like a sword,
glinting
in the sun. As simple as that, there is nothing to say. And
we live
on the edge of that sword; one slip and one meets death. To
be able
to die without fear is all that matters. Until then, just drink
your sake and do
what you must. Wander the earth, like a lion. Like
a lion,
die when your time comes, leaving no trace. For a man who
had
nothing to say, I've said quite a bit! Perhaps I have something
in
common with my Western friends, after all. Ha!
Now, to
my own story.
As I
have said at the outset, I have been a Ronin, a warrior
without
a Lord. It was not always so. When I was a youth, I
apprenticed
myself to a school of swordsmanship. We were many,
we
students, and we served our Lord and teacher devotedly. I was
a
reserved type, and accustomed to staying by myself. I was
inclined
to be cold and distant, even though my burning heart was
filled
with desire and emotion. It is often so with us, a fact which
Westerners
are not able to grasp very well.
I
trained long and diligently. I struggled so hard, in fact, that I
was
often exhausted and in despair at my inability to reach my
goal
and master my task. In time, however, I grew very proficient
-- so proficient, indeed, that I was able to
defeat all my fellow
pupils.
At length, my Master acknowledged that he had nothing
more to
teach me. He blessed me and told me to go forth for
further
enlightenment. I bowed and went forth in joy and
anticipation.
I traveled throughout the land and sought encounters
with
swordsmen of every shape and talent. Sometimes I was
defeated
and sometimes I was victorious and with every encounter
my
skill grew. I was able, in time, to find other Masters who took me
further
in my craft. After many years of effort, I was able to
perfect
myself to a degree which seemed satisfactory.
It came
to pass, however, that when I returned to my ancestral
home, I
was honored, but deceived. My skill and talent were
beyond
question, but my former Masters grew old and narrow.
They
were jealous, it seemed, of what I had accomplished and
were in
fear of losing their power. As it is, sometimes, with the old
who
cannot bend gracefully, they turned ever more rigid. I
sorrowed,
for it is in the nature of my land to respect the old and
do
everything possible to avoid the shame of losing face. I tried to
keep my
peace and do what I could to advance our common school
of
swordsmanship. In time, pupils sought me out as a Master.
They
went not to the Elders, and it was for this, I think, that the
Old
Ones grew even more jealous and irritated. Gossip increased,
and I
know not what was said of me.
When
the time came for me to be fully acknowledged as a
Master
in my own right, the Elders banded together and looked
piously
down their noses at me. They nodded their hoary heads
and
said that I was not ready, that I was more a butcher than a
swordsman,
and so on. At first, I could not believe my ears, and I
laughed.
When I saw that they meant what they said, I became
both
furious and disconsolate. What could I do? Thy refused to
reason
or discuss. They looked for my submission, without even
being
honest enough to openly demand it. They hid in their
pomposity,
for they were, no doubt, afraid of my swordsmanship.
There
was nothing to do except leave the Masters and the
School
and wander alone in the world. A Ronin. A warrior
without
a Lord. A disciple without a Master. A Master without
recognition.
I
wandered for a long time. After a year or so, I was no longer
furious
at the deception and betrayal by my former teachers, and
was
able to realize that what they said had a grain of truth in it. I
was
Master of my craft, but not Master of myself. I was, indeed,
still
attached to fame, recognition, power -- in
short, to desire. I
knew
full well that the swordsman's craft was nothing without
Enlightenment,
and that I was, in truth, immersed in the illusion
of this
world -- bound up with ignorance and
desire.
I
resolved to retreat into the forest, where I could meet myself
alone,
without a Master, without assistance, and without a light.
II
I retreated into the forest where I remained alone for many days
and
nights. At first, I could think of nothing but my own despair. I
was
alone and lonely. This was a shock to a man like myself, who
had
been very used to thinking of himself as a lone one, who can
wander
the world without need of anyone. Ha! I thought, this is
salutary
in itself -- I must have been attached to
the idea that I am
alone
and a lone one. My secret desire for fame and recognition is
no
better and no worse than this secret illusion that I can be
utterly
non-attached to people.
So, I
accepted my loneliness and despair and came running back
to my
friends. I acknowledged all this without losing face and thus
could
return to my isolation and aloneness in a new way. I
understood
that one needed one's aloneness and isolation, along
with
one's need for family and friends. My mountain retreat was
no
place, but a state of mind, and a condition to which I could go at
any
time.
With
this, I decided to look at the state of my soul. It was clearly
an
animal, a kind of ox or bull. I was well aware that my main
preoccupation
over many years had been to somehow cope with
that
animal inside me which was black as black can be, and wild and
unruly
and given to fits and starts and wanderings of all sorts.
That
animai of my wildly ignorant and lustful soul! Every desire
that I
have ever known was contained therein. Even the desire not
to
desire was contained in the hairy beast of that wild and snorting
creature.
Yes, I had seen him in every state: asleep, lusting,
chaotic,
well-ordered and disciplined, wild and adventuresome,
frightened,
joyous and aggressive. I did everything possible to
tame
him. I restrained him with ropes. I whipped him with as
many
lashes as I could manage. Yes, I had done all these things. I
had
even given him his full way. To which he responded with
whims
and chaos and hungers which immediately set the rest of
my soul
into guilt and despair all over again.
I was
no stranger to the animal of my soul and all his
movements.
So this time it was no small surprise to see that he had
whitened
considerably! That was extraordinary! After all these
years
of taming and fighting and struggling with this passionate
bull of
my soul, with all his rages, lusts, disregardings --now I saw
him,
indeed, whitening, whitening, whitening. How was this
possible?
Now, I
had to reflect. All these years of my effort and now when
I
simply accepted my needs to be with people, and accepted my
needs
to be alone, as well, now my poor bull was whitening. I could
only
conclude that he had whitened because I had accepted him!
But I
had also to conclude that I could accept him because he had
whitened.
Yes, a koan, indeed.
The sound of one hand clapping. It is
the
same. The bull whitens because you accept him, and you
accept
him because he has whitened. So that is what those old
foolish
Masters were always talking about? Well, so be it. I will not
challenge
it; here in front of my nose is a whitening Bull! Indeed, I
shall
have to see how it is that he whitens. Will he wander off
again?
Shall I follow him? Shall I let him go? Should I discipline
him?
Oh,
there is despair! All the rights and wrongs, all the shoulds
and
shouldn'ts. Then my bull is black again, and one must start
from
the beginning. How will I ever learn that what is, is what
matters.
How will I learn to accept that I cannot accept? Oh, oh!
There
he goes, down and around and biting his own tail, and I
whip
him and defeat him, and he laughs and is morose, and I am a
fool
once more! Ha!
Now I
simply stay with him. There he is, white and black, with
the
rope tied into his nostrils, but the rope hangs loosely. He looks
at me;
I look at he. He smiles, I smile. I go sit upon his back. Will he
accept
me? I sit, comfortably. Then he senses my anxiety, and he
throws
me. I am back on the ground, and he laughs. I laugh as well,
but I
beat him again. He groans, and I laugh. He laughs and I groan.
He is
not yet ready. I am not yet ready. I cannot sit upon his back,
but I
can walk with him, and by his side. This I can do.
So, we
walked together for many days. I held the reins very
loosely
-- so loosely at times that it was
as if I did not hold them at
all.
Often I would look at him to see how he was. Now, when I
smiled,
he smiled back. That in itself told me that he was a most
remarkable
bull-ox. A smiling bull-ox? Yes, that, too, is like
the
sound
of one hand clapping, or where your lap goes when you
stand
up.
I
rejoiced: the Smile of the Bull-Ox! Now I laughed. I laughed
and
laughed and laughed. Everything was becoming very amusing
to me.
Was I going mad? No, surely not. The cosmos was a very
great
joke: It was the sound of a Bull-ox smiling.
Now I
could sit and play my flute. I played at first carefully and
delicately.
I did not want to stir up this smiling bull-ox. But no, had
I
forgotten? Music can charm the beast, and so it could, and so it
did. I
played sad songs and mournful ones, and I wept. I played
happy
songs and I laughed. Then I sang. I sang every song I knew,
and
many that I did not know, but simply made up. My voice was
first
parched and squeaky, and too loud and too soft. It needed an
oiling,
or a tempering, just the way that my sword did. I tempered
it,
with sweet water and wine, did I temper it. Heated rice-wine,
how
softly it goes down the gullet! How delicate it is! How little it
affects
you! Until you stand up and are required to sit right down
again.
But
such a fuss about my needs! That is too demeaning of the
swordsman!
With that, the bull turned black again, and snorted
and ran
about, and kicked me and made me very nervous indeed.
You
know of such bull-oxes in the West, do you not? Yes, of
course
you do. I had forgotten. You, Sir Knight, surely know of
that
tradition of the vaulting of the beast, and you Arab-San, you
know
full well of the tradition of the slaying of the beast. Yes, that
is how
you are, are you not? You master and you slay. Yes, I know
that
you understand it as a way to master yourself with grace and
charm
and courage. But do you love the animal? No, you love only
to slay
it, and eat it, or sacrifice it.
I
cannot say you nay, for I, too, have fought this creature and
have
longed to slay him. I cannot slay him, for I am slain thereby. I
cannot
tame him, unless I am tamed. He and I are one. But being
one is
nothing if I cannot mount his back and walk with him
peacefully
home, playing the tune upon my flute. That I long to do.
That
desire is illusion, too, and down and black he goes, and down
and
black I go too.
Will you listen black-white ox?
Will the music calm you?
Does your ear harken to its sound?
Or do you fear I'll harm you!
You are right to fear, you know,
For I am blacker still than you.
You are only a beast,
An animal, fancier than me.
But I have a mind that will not be stilled
Deadlier by far than thee.
But we can not be parted:
Neither you from me, nor me from It.
And if I can not be parted from me.
Then neither You from It.
So fear not, oh ox.
For two are one, and three are one
And the saving force of the Buddha is
Upon us.
III
Many days we wandered, the bull and I. Of course we wandered
together,
for we could no longer be parted. Now I saw him
whitening,
whitening, and I was joyous. Then I saw his whitening
was too
white, as if all the life and joy were going out of him, and I
grew
worried, lest my bull become a cow and just be content to
chew
the cud all day. At this, my bull laughed. Yes, he laughed
indeed.
To you it might sound like a snort, since it comes from my
bull
and not from your own, but to me it was surely a laugh. A
great
deep laugh, that began in the belly and worked its way up
and
out. As if he were to say, "Oh, my master, you have tried to
tame me
and make me good, and now when I am, you grow
irritable
and think me too tame. Who is it that must be tamed?
Hunger
of a soul? Or power-tyranny of a master?"
Thus it
was that I imagined
that my animal spoke to me. I,
indeed,
could imagine it, could I not? For he was and is the animal
of my
own soul and who, if not I, can know his language? I listened
to the
animal of my soul and I ruefully agreed with him. The tamer
must be
tamed, and if there is no love, there is no point. Thus the
flute.
Ah, to play a flute without love is impossible, is it not? I
played
once again, but aside and near him, my ox-bull friend, not
astride
him.
I did not
know why I did not
try and ride him once more, but I
waited.
Then I saw.
What did I see? I saw a
cat leap upon his back. I
saw a
man dig a goad into his side. I saw him teased by a cape. All
this I
saw. Ashes! said I. I have always thought that the whitening
of my
bull, his taming, has always to do with me. Now I see. There
are
those others, those cats and goads and people and capes.
My
ox-bull does not know what hits him. In a moment, he is
snorting
and raging and stuck and does not know who has done
this to
him. Then they say. "What a wild bull! What a vicious
fellow!
My!" I do not know it either, and lament that it is all my
fault.
Oh, precious bull, friend of mine! I have forsaken thee.
"They"
have been able to fool me and thee. Whether they have
wanted
to or not. Oh, good bull, we must become canny, you and I.
The
willow on the bank is green, and can just stay that way, but it,
too,
can be crushed by a boot. Bull, you must see and smell and
hear.
Ah, now, that is the reason for all those sense organs! Was I
blind? Indeed,
I was! I thought that all his sense organs had to do
with
inner vision alone! Ah, what a fool, what a foolish fool of a
fool am
I! Yes, these senses are to tell him when there are cats and
goads
and brutes and capes about. It is enough to know that he
screams
because he has been pierced!
Ah,
brave bull! Now we dance, you and I! Let us dance, you on all
fours,
I on all twos. We dance, for I have discovered it. I have
discovered
what every fool in the world has already known! Ah,
congratulations
to me, and now, I will listen to thee, friend Bull.
When
you snort, I will guess it is because you have been hit!
Ah, brave bull, you do not speak.
And because you do not, I am slow to
understand.
And so slow am I, that I am more foolish yet.
And you go down, and I go down, and we
neither of us know.
What has happened to us both.
When
the ox-bull and I completed our dance, I took him down
into
the world again with me. I was ready to test my new insight
and to
see if, indeed, I could ride on his back, get off again, and be
aware
when he was being stabbed.
We
walked peacefully into the city, and no one remarked about
my bull
and myself, for we all have ox-bulls, have we not? We all
agree
not to pay attention to each other in this regard, do we not?
It is
all so that no one will really criticize us for our animal souls, is
that
not true? I believe it to be. It must be added that the ones who
criticize
most are, in reality, quite unaware of their own animal
souls.
These, poor things, are either old and dead, like the elders,
or have
masked their animal souls beyond any hope and thus are
resentful
that any other animals are alive. Very sad, but painfully
true, I
think, don't you?
No
matter if you agree or not, my ox-bull and I came into the
marketplace
to see if we could be accepted. Sometimes I did it
angrily
and badly, sometimes elegantly. Then there were those
who
shook their capes at him -- they
were hungry for games and
competitive
events. I was
tempted to bring out my sword, but
realized
that that was no longer an issue at all: I had to protect my
bull
without provoking another and be cat-like, cape-like or goadlike
in
return -- if I could.
Sometimes I
could and sometimes, I
could
not. Ah, was that it? Was I now really so free and detached
that I was
free of the desire to be non-attached? With that, my bull
fell
down in the mud, I atop him, and muddy, too. Now I laughed
and
laughed, and my bull laughed too.
Now see
me there, can you? I am walking peacefully in the
marketplace
atop my ox-bull. I am playing the flute peacefully, and
I laugh.
Sometimes I
laugh, sometimes I cry. Sometimes I am
angry,
sometimes I
am peaceful. The bull falls down and the bull
gets
up.
I drink
when I am
thirsty, I eat
when I am hungry.
Now and then
I sleep,
and am as lazy as can be. Now and then I have desire, and
now and
then I hear
fear. Fear is what I hear -- or
desire is what I
hear.
But I hear
and do not fear -- or
rather, I hear
fear and hear
desire,
but I no
longer fear desire. Do you know what I mean?
Look at
the rose! How it grows! Listen to my tune as I walk and sit
on the
back of my bull.
Oh!
Ox-bull, I love thee.
Oh! I
know thee.
To sit
sweetly upon thy back --
No
reins.
To
quietly walk home --
No
reins.
Or to
fear with thee and
follow
that --
No
reins.
Your
snout turns upward to
my
tune.
My
flute turns downward
to your
rhythm.
Is it
noon, with sun aloft?
Or
night, with moon serene?
Ah,
ox-bull, what does it matter?
Man and
Bull are one.
IV
Now,
the animal has gone out of sight, and I sit alone, atop the
mountain,
looking at the darkening sun and misty moon. Rainy it
is, and
cloudy. Nature is sad and beautiful. Yes, you surely know
how our
nature is, for you have seen the paintings of our Masters.
Nature
copies the paintings of our Masters, does it not?
It is
nice, to sit serenely, with whips put away. Now despair has
taken
me over once again. It is not the animal, poor soul of a
bull-ox,
who has nagged me and tormented me and driven me and
kept me
from my peace. No, it is not he. Well, let me say, in
fairness,
that it is no longer He, this bull-soul of mine. No, not He.
Nay, it
is me. . .Yes, yes, yes. It is the I,
the me, the one who speaks,
in his
God-Almightiness. That is the one who puts me in despair.
What a
pipsqueak is the little ego, pompously and vainly sitting
atop it
all. Thinking that it can, or should, lead the animal at all.
Yes,
the animal has gone out of sight, all right. But the Man is still
here,
the Man that I am! The vain and stinking man that I am. Ah,
this I
saw in the Elders. Their vain, pompous, little pretensions,
lording
over their fellow creatures, as if they knew, at all, what is
best
for another, or how he should be! Ah, and that awful little
creature
is, of course, me, too. It is I that is vain, and ambitious,
and
cruel, and it is, save us all, the "I" that wishes to retreat from
the
"I".
Let me
fall away from myself. Let me bury my head 'neath the
mat,
'neath the wood of the pillow. But I cannot escape myself.
Wherever
I look, I find myself. It is the I who seeks to escape. It is
the I
that I find when I do escape. It is the I that I see in thee, no
matter
how I disguise it and change it and move it and account for
it.
Oh,
give me my sword, for now I know what to do with it! Oh, I
must
plunge it within -- take it
into my belly and rip and put an end
to this
Me -- this bloated little me. Death,
you are not to be feared,
you are
to be welcomed as the ender of this meaningless and
pompous
little kabuki drama of mine. Silence! Even my tongue, as
it
speaks, continues the proclamation of the I. Silence, tongue,
Silence!
The one who proclaims silence, who demands it, is also
the
pompous little tyrant. Oh, oh, oh! The groans come out of my
belly,
as if the sword were already within. The groans are not from
pain of
the wound, self-inflicted, but are pains that self inflicts
them.
Where can I flee from self? Where can I go? I follow me
everywhere!
Has it
always been so? Was it this that Gautama endured? Is it
this
that leads them to hold up one finger? Or a flower? Or to keep
one's
finger to one's lips? Or to slap the other in the face? A
thousand
ways of saying, "Do not ask me, for I do not
know! Not
only do
I not know, but if I were to speak, I would already show
that I
do not know, and that this pompous little ego of mine is
already
thinking and proclaiming that it knows."Yes, surely these
great
and wonderful Masters knew that. The demon of it all is the
"I",
the little me. No, not your I, but my I. As I say it, I proclaim the
specialness
of My "I". Oh, pain, oh, agony, oh wounds of the soul
much
greater than that of the flesh!
Where
can I go to escape me? Where can I hide? No use asking
the
question. For the questioner is always I.
Let me
turn to you. If I look at the you, then, perhaps, I escape
the I.
So, I look at you, and what do I see? Ah, it is already finished,
because
it is the I that questions what it sees. Even if I were
to
question
it another way, it could only report that it is the it, is the
it, is
the it, is the it, into an eternity of its that are I's.
So
then, if it cannot be escaped, then let us love it. Ha! Now I
escape
by calling me "us." Like a fancy court. Or a school of
swordsmen,
all contained within the One that is Me! Oh, your
Lordship
of Myself, must I now address you as a plural, as a school
of
Lords? Fine, another way of illusion and self-deception. Oh,
most
great and glorious and pompous little ego! I bow down before
you,
for who could possibly be great enough to bow before you
and be
received by you, than you yourself! It is not enough that I
touch
my head to the floor to you, I must be totally flattened.
There,
does that please you? . . .No? It
does not? Because it is still
only
the I that does it? Totally flattened or totally flattered -- it is
the
same!
Let me
run screaming into oblivion!
Will
death, then, do it? Will that beloved state dissolve once and
for all
this sated samurai self which seeks self and self alone? No,
surely
not. For the wheel of samsara will
continue. Life after life,
kalpa after kalpa, aeon after aeon, until all
karma is dissolved. So,
then,
pompous little man, if not this ego, then another, and
another,
and another. Until the sands of time are all piled up on the
beach
of eternity.
Nothing,
then, little Ronin; nothing, then little Samurai;
nothing,
then, little nothing, except to accept this pompous little
ego of
yourself. Nothing to do but accept it. What was it that the
great
Master once said: "One day you will find that the one who
needs
all your care and love is yourself." Ah, now I see what it is
that he
meant. That is what he meant, he meant -- that is
what he
meant.
Now, I can sing my song. Shall I sing it? Yes.
The great little "I" shall love
The great little "I" shall love
The great little "I" shall love
The wicked little "I".
The great little "eye" sees the
wicked little "I"
The great little "eye" sees the
wicked little "I"
The great little "eye" sees the
wicked little "I"
It sees and is blind to itself.
The great little "Eye" needs the
wicked little "I"
The great little "Eye" needs the
wicked little "I"
To see.
The wicked great "Eye" sees the
good little "I"
The wicked great "Eye" sees the
good little "I"
The wicked great "Eye" sees the
good little "I"
And stabs itself with the sword.
Weep not, great Eye. Cfy not, little I.
And who is this who says, "Weep not,
cry not"?
Is it not another "I"?
No, it is not another "I".
No, it is not. It is not.
Who is it then?
And who is it then, who asks?
It is Nature who asks.
It is Nature who asks.
It is Nature who asks of itself.
I repeat: It is Nature who asks,
It is Nature who asks.
It is Nature who asks
Of itself.
And who is this who says, "I
repeat"?
It is "I", of course, it is
"I".
Do you understand?
Do you understand?
I do; I do.
Eye do; Eye do.
Aye, do; Aye, do.
And there, way up in the air,
There it is: A circle fair.
Sunyata: Suchness
Mandala: Muchness.
And Man has Gone out of Sight.
V
A tree stands in the forest.
Its trunk arches and bends.
No miracle. All do it.
But see: How one side of trunk
Grew round,
And other side of trunk,
Grew round,
And both meet again,
Making a hole.
A hole, is it?
Or a whole?
An empty nothing of everything,
In the middle of the tree trunk.
And that is what is meant
When we say: The tree is treeing.
A flower sways in the wind.
Its petals hold onto its powder.
Does it love itself?
Like a woman stroking her breasts?
Yes.
As the roots love the ground.
Little roots: fine flower.
Great root: gross flower.
Root of the flower.
Roots of the tree.
They sway and bend and arch.
And seek their Source.
Up into Heaven, down into Earth.
And that is what is meant,
When we say: The flower is flowering.
The painter sees the tree-hole,
Though he is blind.
The painter hears the flower,
Though he is deaf.
The painter smells his art,
Though he has no nose.
He tells us all,
Though he can not speak.
And man is a painter,
Is he not?
And knows the sound of flowers,
The smell of visions,
The words of pictures.
And that is what is meant,
When we say: The painter is painting.
For man is manning
And trees are treeing
And life seeks its goal;
Which is: to be.
The bee is beeing,
Why can't we?
The Source.
It speaks:
Where, in the thunder of the Name,
Is the ghost?
The one who speaks without body?
Does he exist?
Apart from Nature?
No.
Nothing, then is supernatural?
No, all is natural.
And the best must be Super-Natural.
What is most natural, is.
Even anti-natural?
Yes. Even anti-natural.
For nature has its opposites,
Nature is its op-o-sits.
Strange word, listen:
Op-look! 0-oh! Sits-be!
And that is what is meant,
When we say: nature is naturing.
VI
So I came down from my mountain, and no one knew that I had
been
away. No one knew at all, at all -- no one
knew at all. That, Sir
Knight,
is a miracle, I grant you. That is the saving force of the
Buddha
that is upon us.
For
when He is with me and I am He, I have bliss-bestowing
hands,
I walk with my laughing face, and paunchy belly, and I am
at home
with wine-bibbers, vagabonds, and tramps. As well as
warriors
and teachers and geishas. And wives and children and
ants.
We and they are all Buddhas, are we not? Yes, we are.
Buddha
and his Bo tree, and you and your Tree of Immortality.
And I?
Yes, I. Now, I walk without a sword. Now I carry a staff,
and a
lamp, and people come to me for bliss and enlightenment.
What do
I tell them? I say, "Go away, there is nothing to know!"
For now
I know that what the Old Masters have said is true: There
is
nothing to know. I also know-and this the sad and wonderful
part-that
we all have to find this out for ourselves and in our own
way and
in our own time, and many times over, and with many
gurus,
and with no gurus.
So,
come my friends, Sir Knight and Sir Arab, drink with me and
embrace
me, as I embrace me, as I embrace thee. For my tree is as
yours,
Sir Knight, and my animal is as yours, Sir Arab. My
triangle,
too: My self with all its faults and sufferings, the saving
force
of the Buddha, and Sunyata: the suchness of things. My
triangle,
too.
Look,
look, see!: The Great Circle of the Rising Sun, Setting
Moon,
and Empty Hole! You see it there in the trunk of the Tree?
It can
contain your Star, but need not. It can contain your Crescent,
but
need not. It is all one, as I have said, and we have said. So, my
brothers,
I salute you as Buddhas!