Dharma Discourse by Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Sensei

In this talk, Shugen Sensei continues the teachings about the stages along the Path. The 6th stage of the Ox Herding Pictures is called Riding the Ox Home. After the immense struggles of “wrestling” and “taming” (stages 4 & 5, respectively), the ox is now calm and pliant. However, there’s a problem: there is still an ox and you riding it. Indeed, another duality! We have a tendency to see things as practice and not practice; enlightenment and delusion; sacred and mundane. The conditioned mind grasps and has difficulty harmonizing, but in the dharma, we see there are no hinderances, no conflicts.

The koan in this collection is “Yunyan Sweeps the Ground,” case 21 of the Book of Serenity. This discourse was given at the Zen Center of NYC on May 19th, 2013.