- The enlightenment for which Zen aims, for which Zen exists, comes of itself.
- As consciousness, one moment it does not exist, the next it does.
- But physical man walks in the element of time even as he walks in mud ...
- dragging his feet and his true nature.
- So even Zen must compromise and recognize progressive steps of awareness
- leading closer to the ever instant of enlightenment.
- In the twelfth century the Chinese master Kakuan drew the pictures of the
- ten bulls, basing them on the earlier Taoist bulls, and wrote the comments
- in prose and verse. His vision was pure Zen ... going deeper than earlier
- versions, which had ended with the nothingness of the eighth picture.
- The bull is the eternal principle of life ... truth in action.
- The ten bulls represent steps in the realization of one's true nature.
- This sequence is as potent today as it was when Kakuan developed it from
- earlier works and made his paintings of the bull.
- An understanding of the creative principle transcends any time or place.
- The 10 Bulls is more than poetry, more than pictures. It is a revelation
- of spirtual unfoldment paralleled in every bible of human experience.
- May the reader, like the Chinese patriarch, discover the footprints of his
- potential self and, carrying the staff of his purpose and the wine jug of
- his true desire, frequent the market place and there enlighten others.
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