The Ox-Herder and the Good Shepherd: Finding Christ on the Buddha's Path
The twelfth-century Zen master Kakuan’s 10 ox-herding pictures and their accompanying poems and commentaries are his only extant works, and the pictures as Hart presents them are only the most faithful copies of the originals. They constitute a parable of Buddhist enlightenment—the path to its attainment and life thereafter. There are three figures in them: a boy who is seeking an ox; the ox, which, once found, tamed, and ridden home, disappears from the narrative; and a big-bellied, jolly man, who looks like what Westerners call the laughing Buddha but is actually the legendary enlightened monk, Hotei. For the purposes of the parable, the three are one—a truth-seeker (the boy) achieving his full being (boy plus ox) or enlightenment and reentering society to help others reach it. Hewing closely to the Buddhism in the parable, Hart educes its deep consonance with the voyage of the Christian in this world (though not to the next). An exceedingly graceful work of the comparative-religious spirit. --Ray Olson