SEEKING THE OX
This single person wandering around looking for an ox looks lonely, a bit forlorn. This corresponds to our feelings of frustration while walking the path. We sometimes wonder, when will some tangible achievement finally arrive? As we gaze at this image, the phrase “What’s wrong with this picture?” may arise. The feeling-tone is more like “What’s missing from this picture?” What are we missing? Everything. We have narrowed our gaze so much that everyone and everything around us seem to fall away as we exhaust ourselves searching for what’s painfully absent. . . .
SEEKING: INTERPRETING THE FIRST OXHERDING IMAGE
Trungpa Rinpoche, commenting on this first seeking stage, writes, “You discover that ego’s attempt to create an ideal environment is unsatisfactory.” This is a vicious circle: loss and lack leading to actions of denial leading to disappointment and even more dissatisfaction than we had at the beginning. Our moment-to-moment investment in avoiding and denying suffering pays big dividends in increased dissatisfaction.
The path of awakening begins with insight into this vicious cycle of avoidance. When we linger with our dissatisfaction, some of our ambitious, neurotic speed to vanquish all discomfort begins to slow down. Welcoming is a space of momentary freedom—allowing our lives to be exactly as bitter and as sweet as they are without manipulation.
By contrast, our frenzied, unsuccessful attempts at complete command and control are part of the materialistic outlook and practice: buying and consuming, getting and spending, 24/7. “The materialistic outlook dominates everywhere,” wrote Trungpa Rinpoche in 1968. The essence of the materialistic viewpoint is that we are fundamentally lacking something important. Often, we’re not quite sure what that something is, but like the person in this first image seeking the ox, we feel its absence keenly.
Let’s linger here a moment to deepen this understanding of the connection between our inner feeling of lack and the outer practice of consumerism. Consuming goods and services is, of course, a major pillar of many contemporary societies. There is also a strong link between consumption and environmental devastation. Dr. Diana Ivanova, research fellow at the University of Leeds’ School of Earth and Environment, writes, “We all like to put the blame on someone else, the government, or businesses. . . . But between 60-80 percent of the impacts on the planet come from household consumption. If we change our consumption habits, this would have a drastic effect on our environmental footprint as well.” The outlook and daily practice of materialism have devastating consequences.
Buddhist teacher Martine Batchelor notes that the young oxherder is “looking a little lost,” “searching for something,” and “not even sure what.” Perhaps our fundamental uncertainty is connected with the ox’s elusiveness. We’re not sure. Is there really an ox somewhere, or is life just this way, with every experience marked by basic dissatisfaction? Korean Zen Master Kusan Sunim says of this stage, “However much you try, the way to proceed remains unclear.”
This unclear feeling of lack motivates us to search for fulfillment in the outer world: “If something is missing here, maybe if I search hard enough, I can find it over there.” First, we search for lasting satisfaction in the physical and emotional realms. We fixate on “food, wealth, companionship, fame, and sensual attachments,” according to one Tibetan Buddhist practice text. Batchelor narrates our frustrating search for lasting happiness in changing settings: “We think that if we had enough material things we would be happy. We would like to have a house with a nice garden or enough money to buy whatever takes our fancy. But nothing seems to completely satisfy us. . . . Perhaps we hoped that a good relationship would give us lasting happiness, but it is very hard to find the right person or be the right person, all-loving, all-accepting. Even if we find someone, we discover that one person cannot satisfy all our needs, wishes, and hopes. A worthwhile or highly-paid job might give us security, but again this covers only a certain period of our lives. All these things give us only a fleeting happiness. Something seems to be missing.”
Finally, we turn, like Shakyamuni after leaving his family palace, away from seeking outer pleasures toward acquiring more and better inner experiences. We move to spiritual seeking for higher, transcendent states of consciousness, more meditative insights, the blissful streamings of yoga, and more resilience and healing. At first, these seem to be the answer (even if we are not sure what the question is). When spiritual experiences also show their unruly nature, coming and going just like everything else, we spur ourselves on with memories and hope: surely we just need to try a bit harder to find the solution to the problem of life?
Notice that it’s our fixation on solidifying various pleasures that eventually leads to frustration. Nothing lasts. There is no permanent happiness to be found in pleasing experiences (or in fending off unpleasant experiences). The problem is not with food or yoga or our companions or spiritual states. The problem that repeatedly gives birth to frustration and disappointment is our futile attempt to build a permanent nest from these transitory materials and experiences. We don’t need to renounce the world or our friends and families so much as we need to change our inner attitude. Turns out that, as that wise book title suggests, “Happiness is an inside job.”
An old book presciently titled Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism states, “There is no need to struggle to be free—absence of struggle is itself freedom.” The converse is also true: all our willful struggling, searching, and seeking creates a prison of discontent. Searching is both the way into further experience of the maze of self-frustration and the way into experiencing the spacious meadow that allows life to be lived directly as life.
American Zen teacher Josh Bartok Roshi says of the searching stage pictured in this first image, “This is raising the mind of enlightenment.” And as Tibet’s great realized poet Milarepa sang, “The Great Awakening of the Bodhi mind can never be achieved by searching and by wanting.” If we continue to seek an object—external or internal—to satisfy our inner lack, the path leads to repeated frustration and further seeking. If we turn toward the sense of lack itself, if we search by being willing to linger with the feeling of the impulse to seek, a door to spaciousness opens. Searching is both the confused voice of neurotic entanglement, of chasing our own tails, and the clarion call of basic sanity: “There’s no need to seek more over there; look here.”
You can also read Polly Young-Eisendrath’s review of Welcoming Beginner’s Mind by Gaylon Ferguson here.
Adapted from Welcoming Beginner’s Mind by Gaylon Ferguson © 2024. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc.
We thank Shambhala Publications for providing this excerpt, and we thank our readers for supporting dharma publishers.
