The Ten Oxherding Pictures
廓庵《十牛图颂》 — Chan's Most Systematic Map of the Journey
The Koan
廓庵《十牛图颂》：
一、寻牛 — 茫茫拨草去追寻，水阔山遥路更深。
二、见迹 — 水边林下迹偏多，芳草离披见也么？
三、见牛 — 黄鹂枝上一声声，日暖风和岸柳青。
四、得牛 — 竭尽精神获得渠，心强力壮卒难除。
五、牧牛 — 鞭绳时时不离身，恐伊纵步入埃尘。
六、骑牛归家 — 骑牛迤逦欲还家，羌笛声声送晚霞。
七、忘牛存人 — 骑牛已得到家山，牛也空兮人也闲。
八、人牛俱忘 — 鞭索人牛尽属空，碧天寥廓信难通。
九、返本还源 — 返本还源已费功，争如直下若盲聋？
十、入廛垂手 — 露胸跣足入廛来，抹土涂灰笑满腮。
Kuo-an's Ten Oxherding Pictures (廓庵十牛图颂):
1. Seeking the Ox — Searching through tangled grass, across wide waters and distant mountains. The road goes deeper.
2. Finding Footprints — Along the water, beneath the trees, tracks are plentiful. Can you see them in the scattered grass?
3. Seeing the Ox — An oriole sings on the branch. The sun is warm, the wind gentle, the willows green.
4. Catching the Ox — Exhausting every effort, I finally seize it. But its wild strength is hard to tame.
5. Taming the Ox — Whip and rope never leave my hand, lest it wander into the dust.
6. Riding the Ox Home — Riding the ox, I wind my way home. A flute plays, sending off the evening glow.
7. Ox Forgotten, Person Remains — Riding the ox, I've reached my home mountain. The ox is gone, and the person is at ease.
8. Both Ox and Person Forgotten — Whip, rope, ox, and person — all empty. The vast blue sky, hard to convey.
9. Returning to the Source — Returning to the source was already great effort. Why not be blind and deaf from the start?
10. Entering the Marketplace with Helping Hands — Bare-chested, barefoot, I enter the marketplace. Mud-smeared, ash-covered, my face full of laughter.
Unpacking the Koan
The Ten Oxherding Pictures (十牛图, shí niú tú), attributed to Kuo-an Shiyuan (廓庵师远, 12th century), are Chan's most famous visual teaching. Using the metaphor of an ox-herder searching for a lost ox, they map the entire spiritual journey — from initial confusion to final return to the world.
Stages 1–3 are the search. The seeker doesn't know where the ox is. They search through tangled grass, find footprints, and finally glimpse the ox. This is the beginning of practice — the recognition that something is missing, the first encounters with teachings, the initial moments of insight.
Stages 4–5 are the struggle. Having found the ox, the herder must catch it and tame it. The ox is wild — it represents the untamed mind, the habits and passions that resist control. This is the hardest phase: the daily work of practice, discipline, and patience.
Stages 6–7 are the integration. The ox is tamed. The herder rides home. Then even the ox is forgotten — only the person remains, at ease. This is the stage of mature practice, where effortlessness replaces effort.
Stage 8 is the great emptiness — both ox and person are forgotten. Nothing remains. This is the absolute, the formless, the void. Many traditions stop here.
Stage 9 returns to the source — but Kuo-an adds a twist: "Why not be blind and deaf from the start?" If the source was always here, why the journey? This is Chan's characteristic irony.
Stage 10 is the masterpiece. After all the searching, the taming, the forgetting, the returning — the herder goes back to the marketplace. Bare-chested. Covered in mud. Face full of laughter. The spiritual journey ends where it began — in the world. But now the herder is free. Not free from the world, but free in it.
Why It Matters
The Ten Oxherding Pictures are Chan's most systematic attempt to map the unmappable. And their genius is in the final image: the return to the marketplace. Chan does not end in the monastery, on the meditation cushion, or in the void. It ends in the street, among people, in ordinary life — with laughter.
Stage 10 — "Entering the Marketplace with Helping Hands" (入廛垂手) — is Chan's ultimate teaching. The enlightened being doesn't float above the world. They enter it — dirty, laughing, helping. The sacred and the mundane are one. The journey was always a circle.
For practice: wherever you are in the ten stages, know that the final destination is not somewhere else. It's right here, in the marketplace, in the mud, in the laughter. The ox was never lost. You were just looking in the wrong direction.
Practice Pointer
Which stage are you in right now? Don't answer intellectually — feel it. Are you searching (1–3)? Struggling (4–5)? Integrating (6–7)? Dissolving (8–9)? Or are you ready to return (10)? Wherever you are, that's the right place. The ox doesn't care which stage you think you're at. It's already walking beside you.