Denouement.

I am the world.
There is nothing apart from it.

The World Meets the World

These are the last two Ox Herder pictures. In some respects we have been talking about these two pictures from the very beginning. Here he is again, the man in the world. But has he realized something or not?

Was he ever anywhere else? And yet, he feels and thinks he has taken a trip. The holy man was always there and yet he took his confusion as real.

He began to sense something, to see a trace of something that began to clarify his confusion until he reaches the "holiness" that is always with him.

But wait! The path of practice and spiritual awakening is not quite so linear as these pictures depict. It is very difficult to determine which stage comes before another or whether one repeats a stage or skips one. There is no progress or regression. There is confusion and clarity. There is birth, sickness, old age and death. There
is change, suffering and delusion. All of it is there, in the beginning, the middle and the end. He could wake up here or there. The biggest error in Zen is not to begin to practice followed by not to continue.      

To Be Continued...Keep going, we are not done yet. To Be continued...