On the Back of a Buffalo
Long ago in China lived a learned man who spent most of his waking hours reading scholarly books and contemplating the lofty wisdom of ancient sages. One day, he chanced upon a book that discussed the virtues of a remarkable animal called “buffalo.” The animal is big and powerful, yet gentle and kind, proud and independent, yet humble and always ready to render assistance to anyone with a heavy burden. Whether you are rich or poor, young or old, noble or lowly, it makes no difference to the animal. Furthermore, the female of the species produces milk even to nurse human babies.
Deeply touched by what he had learned about the virtuous animal, the man set out on a journey in search of a buffalo. He traveled up and down the river, beyond the hills and far into the vast continent of China, never realizing, however, that the very animal he was riding was none other than the animal called buffalo.
Zen Master Po-Chang (720-814 CE), while instructing a young monk Tai-an in the way of Zen, said to him, “Searching for the Buddha-nature is like riding an ox in search of an ox.” You may spend your lifetime searching for it, but you will never find it until you realize that you are on the back of what you are in search of.
The same truth applies to our search for God: We may seek God’s grace, but we are already in its warm embrace, whether we deserve it or not. Likewise, the God we seek to know and understand is the One who dwells in us and enables our seeking. God above, therefore, cannot be known apart from God within. After all, God is, in the words of St. Augustine, “more intimate than I am to myself (intimior intimo meo).”
In the first chapter of the Gospel according to John, the author describes his theology of incarnation in these words:
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us;
we have seen his glory,
the glory as of God’s only heir, full of grace and truth.”
John is saying here that the transcendent God has become flesh in the life of Jesus of Nazareth and, hence, become immanent in the humanity of Jesus. Later in the fourteenth chapter of the same Gospel, Jesus, in preparation for his own impending departure, promises his disciples that the Holy Spirit, as God’s indwelling presence, will be given to them when he is no longer with them “in flesh.” In other words, God’s Spirit dwells within us now and guides us through our journey of life, teaching us all things necessary for the journey.
Thus, we detect in John’s Gospel a two-step process of God’s self-identification with or self-immanence in us — from God the Transcendent to Jesus the Incarnate, and from Jesus the Incarnate to the Spirit’s indwelling presence in us. A typical Western theology, however, has emphasized the absolute Other-ness of the transcendent God, but often failed to mention that the same God is immanent in the humble and mundane reality of life on earth.
Following Po-Chang’s ox metaphor, his disciple Tai-an asked him further, “Master, what does one do after finding the ox?” “One goes home on the back of it,” replied Po-Chang. In a typically cryptic way of Zen speech, “going home on the back of an ox” means making reentry into life as one who has made peace with the ox (i.e. one’s inmost self, the Buddha-nature, or even “God within”) and integrated it into one’s own life.
At around the end of the ninth century, inspired probably by Po-Chang’s ox metaphor, Zen artists created what you might call a pictorial guide to Zen practice, and simply called it The Ten Ox-herding Pictures, as it consisted of a series of ten pictures. It has been widely used as an aid to Zen training, but it also suggests stages of our spiritual journey in search of a buffalo. The first picture shows a child looking for an ox. The following pictures show the boy finding the traces of the ox, then finding, catching and taming the ox; he then goes home happily on his back. In the seventh picture, the ox is no longer in the boy’s mind. The eighth picture shows only an empty circle, signifying that the child now lives as if neither he nor the ox mattered. The journey has now made a complete circle, after which the child enters the village offering bliss and peace to all, as all dualities have now ceased and all is in perfect unity and harmony.
The Buddha-nature is believed to be one’s inmost and truest self, which Buddhists believe is an immanent form of the transcendent. Therefore, a journey in search of the divine is actually a journey in search of one’s true self.
We are now embarking upon a journey, and ours is also a journey in search of the God who transcends us but dwells in us as well. It will be an exciting process of finding ourselves in God and finding God in ourselves, in the world and in nature. In so doing, we may be able to cross the ocean of dualities, overcome the split within humanity and the rift in the world and reach the yonder shore of peace and wholeness.
This journey, however, is not just an individualistic pursuit of inner peace alone, for out of the Great Calm of the Spirit within must come compassion for all and passion for justice and peace in the world. Thus, ours is an inward-outward journey. The journey is particularly pertinent today, as races are pitted against each other, natural environment is being destroyed at an unprecedented speed, and our planet, crowded with unprecedented 6.6 billion people, is still plagued by loneliness and alienation.
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