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3. Perceiving the Ox


 
I hear the song of the nightingale. 
The sun is warm, the wind is mild, 
willows are green along the shore.
Here no ox can hide! 
What artist can draw that massive head, those majestic horns?
 
When a verse doesn’t yield up its secrets, one understands why it might be referred to as a blank verse! And yet, in this game of hide-and-seek in which one pursues the “Blessed Knowledge of Emptiness,” it is the absence of some “thing” that is most revealing. In this verse, the insight is “hidden” in plain sight. The ox is plainly visible, here, now; not in this, not as this, but, could we say, as Is-ness itself?
 
“Not this, not this,” that famous line of negation, is literally pointing to the “how” of comprehending the Mystery. Nisargadatta Maharaj writes:
 
After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are. The ‘I am’ is certain. The ‘I am this’ is not. 
 
Discover all that you are not -- body, feelings thoughts, time, space, this or that -- nothing, concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you. The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive.
 
The clearer you understand on the level of mind that you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker you will come to the end of your search and realize that you are limitless being.
 
That Thou Art, it appears is not referring to that which is perceived; It is referring to “that we are” an awareness of Being, perceiving the warmth of the sun, the mildness of wind, the greenness of willows and the song of the nightingale. If attention is on the object of experience—warmth of the sun, for example—one often fails to be aware of that which is beyond/behind/within experience. Nisargadatta again: 
 
Forget the known. The knower must be known. 
 
The glorious moment of well-being described in the verse is familiar. It is the stuff of a spring day! It is easy to conclude that the circumstances—mild wind, warm sun, green willow and bird song—are necessary conditions for finding the “ox.” But, as we all also know, it is possible to be in magnificent surroundings, present to the beauty of it all, and miss the awareness of being that which perceives. As the Guide recently said on the morning show, “It isn’t out there, it’s in you; it is what you are!” Can we always be aware of That, no matter what the circumstances?
 
Pausing between clouds
the moon rests
in the eyes of its beholders.
— Bashō
 
When we mistakenly attribute Presence to conditions, we are still seeking in the “wrong” places. The ox remains hidden, and the practitioner can fall prey to the despair of inhabiting a world “out there” where Goodness is palpably missing and “love in action” is misinterpreted to mean creating conditions that deliver the missing experience of well-being.  
 
One keeps having to recollect that these 12th-century aids to spiritual practice reflect where a practitioner is, in this instant, not necessarily in a trajectory of progress along the way, but the process being inhabited in a moment of contemplation. What is being seen (or not in this case) is apparently not the point. That there isn’t clarity/well-being is simply information that attention is “out there” rather than “in here,” the ever-present ox being obscured by the current process being attended to.
 
So the question arises: Is it possible to be in well-being while the world out there isn’t meeting conditions for well-being? Can the ox be perceived in the midst of violence, hatred and chaos? Perhaps it’s unfair to phrase the question conditionally when what is sought is Unconditional?
 
We ourselves are not an illusory part of Reality; rather are we Reality itself illusorily conceived.
— Wei-wu-Wei
 
In the early morning hours, long before sunrise, as one sits on the cushion, there is only breath—thoughts have died away and the steady consciousness of being hints of a Reality of a different order from the busyness of daily mental activity.  Awareness of being transmutes into the thought of “Oh, to inhabit this peace, in every moment!” and “I” tumbles into the world where the ox does hide. It appears to be invisible in a fractured world, a world in which one is alive, not to the pulse of the life force as it dances as all forms, but to a bewilderment that Life doesn’t conform to the shape of Goodness that it should. At this juncture, is it possible to reclaim attention, to redirect to the breath, to access the golden serenity of a purely contemplative moment when there is no question of “Why this?” For isn’t it true that the world “out there” was still rife with chaos when Awareness, not “I,” was on the cushion, just before sunrise, as birdsong filled the air?
 
Gasshō
ashwini