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10 B u l l s
Written by Kakuan (12th Century)
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.
That is what this book is about. In the twelfth century the
Chinese master Kakuan drew the pictures of the ten bulls, basing them
on earlier Taoist bulls, and wrote the comments in prose and verse
translated here. His version was pure Zen, going deeper than earlier
versions, which had ended with the nothingness of the eighth picture.
It has been a constant source of inspiration to students ever since,
and many illustrations of Kakuan's bulls have been made through the
centuries.
The illustrations reproduced here are modern versions by the
noted Kyoto woodblock artist Tomikichiro Tokuriki, descendant of a
long line of artists and proprietor of the Daruma-do teashop (Daruma
is the Japanese name for Bodhidharma, the first Zen patriarch). His
oxherding pictures are as delightfully direct and timelessly
meaningful as Kakuan's original pictures must have been.
The following is adapted from the preface by Nyogen Senzaki
and Paul Reps to the first edition of their translation.
The bull is the eternal principle of life, truth in action. The
ten bulls represent sequent steps in the realization of one's true nature.
This sequence is as potent today as it was when Kakuan
(1100-1200) developed it from earlier works and made his paintings of
the bull. Here in America we perform a similar work eight centuries
later to keep the bull invigorated. [There in Kyoto, Tokuriki has
done the same.]
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 spiritual 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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