Monthly archive

6. Riding the Ox Home



Mounting the Ox, slowly
I return homeward.
The voice of my flute intones
through the evening.
Measuring with hand-beats
the pulsating harmony,
I direct the endless rhythm.
Whoever hears this melody
will join me.

In this verse, the ox no longer seems at odds with its rider. It appears to have a beatific smile on its face and a spring in its step. It isn’t running away. It isn’t resisting or recalcitrant. It isn’t resigned. One can project a sense of amity, a one-ness between the ox and the oxherd.

Many times it does appear that we are at odds with Life. The wheel of karma seems both implacable and cosmically indifferent to personal concerns. It is tempting to blame “out there,” the world or Divinity, for our lack of inner harmony. But spiritual practice gently invites an inward focus, taking responsibility for the state of our interiority.

Looking inward begins with awareness of conditioned mind. The marketplace of voices isn’t at all peaceful. Attempting to master the mind creates conflict, establishing a duality, “me” versus “my” mind. Now it appears that we are at odds with the world and with ourselves, a recipe for unhappiness, not peace.

In addition to offering a redirect of attention inward, Practice introduces a qualifier for the nature of witnessing: it is affectionate. If the gaze isn’t affectionate, the ox remains an object, separate from, other than the one that seeks. Friendliness is the ingredient that reconciles otherness, bridging the apparent distance between seeker and sought. It isn’t that we find love for the ego-personality. Yes, there is compassion for the incarnation suffering identification with the ego process of Self-forgetting, but peace arises because affection reestablishes one-ness. Ox and oxherd are of the same Source, mirroring each other’s Essence, the oxherd being the receiving apparatus through which the Ox is experiencing itself. Alan Watts:

Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.

Once we comprehend that seeker, seeking and sought are All One, isn’t Practice the process of measuring with hand-beats the pulsating harmony of the endless rhythm?

Gasshō
ashwini