Things that smell of Buddhism are disagreeable,

but things that have absolutely no whiff of Buddhism are even worse.

A quote by Zen Master Yamada Mumone.

In this episode, I'm excited to be talking about and explaining to you the 10 ox-herding pictures of Zen, which is a metaphor or a model with 10 stages

for the stages of awakening or enlightenment. These 10 ox-herding pictures, which we'll be talking about in great detail.

I'll be showing you the pictures and what they all mean.

This is a model that emerged a long time ago, almost a thousand years ago.

It emerged in China before there was even Japanese Zen when it was known as Chinese Chan

in the 12th century, so really, really ancient. And there are various versions of this model out there, as you might imagine. They've evolved and changed, but I will be heavily relying on not just my own insights and ideas,

but a rare book called The Lectures on the Ten Ox Hurting hurting pictures and here is the book

and this book is actually an out-of-print book. It's very rare, difficult to find. I paid around $100 for this book and if you try to buy it now on

Amazon or elsewhere you might see it for sale for several hundred dollars.

And it's a very small book, as you can see here.

Very thin, it's only about 110 pages long,

but it's filled with timeless wisdom, especially for those of us who are interested in non-duality and pursuing

awakening.

So this wasn't actually written by Yamada Momone.

It was a speech that he gave. This was a lecture that he gave to his

Zen monk students. So this is some of the most advanced wisdom because this wasn't just

taught to regular people, this was to serious monks who were in the Zen monastery with him doing these serious practices.

So these are of course his words, but also they were translated by Victor Sogan-Horry.

So credit goes out to him as well.

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