The Seventh Picture | Ox Herding at Morgan's Bay

In the seventh ox herding picture we see only the ox herder.

The ox is off sleeping, but where it is sleeping is not our concern. It is quite different from the beginning stages where we could not find the ox.

Beginning practice is like swimming upstream. A practitioner must work hard to stay afloat and make headway against the current. Great effort is required. But at the stage of the seventh picture, the swimmer is gone. He has become one with the water, and water is all there is to be found. Is there still swimming, then? At this point, there’s nothing to do.

In the sixth picture, practice (self-cultivation) is effortless, yet self-cultivation continues. At the seventh stage, self-cultivation ceases, but the person is still there.

In the Platform Sutra, the Sixth Patriarch, Hui-neng, says that such a person no longer has love, hate, or aversion in his mind. He can stretch out his legs from the lotus position and lie down. There is no more need to sit.

There’s a story about a monk who lived during the Ming dynasty. He was enlightened, but he didn’t have a temple of his own or anywhere to stay, so he just wandered around. One day he came across a monastery with statues of heavenly kings in front, and he fell asleep right under the feet of one of the statues. He was snoring loudly when a high government official rode by. The official heard the snoring and became angry.

He said, “Who’s this? What kind of monk lies around and doesn’t get up when I come?”

The monk heard him and said, “It’s only me, a monk with nothing to do.”

The official raged, “What! A monk with nothing to do! How can you have nothing to do? You have meditation. You can recite the sutras. You can prostrate. How can you say a monk has nothing to do?”

The monk said, “I don’t have to do any of that.”

After a while, the government official understood that he was not an ordinary monk. He reached the seventh stage of the ox herding pictures. But on this retreat we have a lot to do. We’re not up to the seventh stage of the ox herding pictures, so we must continue to meditate.

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