Riding the Ox Home Stages on the Path of Enlightenment

Maps and guideposts are helpful when we undertake a journey. The ten Ox-Herding Pictures, the accompanying ancient poems, and a modern commentary by John Daido Loori, sketch the spiritual path encountered in Zen training, a path of exhaustive study of the self and the realization of the ultimate nature of reality. The Ox-Herding Pictures can be our companion on the Way of self-discovery, our compass and perspective when we need one. They are a bottomless source of mysterious wisdom to which we can return again and again for inspiration, and they translate easily into the gritty reality of spiritual practice that emerges from and grounds us in the inescapable relevance of our daily lives. The exquisite versions of the pictures found in the book are traditional Chinesenangabrush paintings by Gyokusei Jikihara Sensei, a modern Japanese master of calligraphy and a teacher in the Obaku School of Zen. The traditional verses accompanying them have been translated by John Daido Loori and Kazuaki Tanahashi, translator and editor ofEnlightenment Unfolds: The Essential Teachings of Zen Master Dogen.

John Daido Loori is the abbot of the Zen Mountain Monastery in Mount Tremper, New York, and the founder and director of the Mountains and Rivers Order, an organization of associated Zen Buddhist temples, practice centers, and meditation groups from around the United States and abroad. He is also president of Dharma Communications, an enterprise devoted to making Buddhist teachings widely available through videotapes, books, meditation supplies, and a quarterly journal, Mountain Record. Devoted to maintaining authentic Zen training, he has developed a distinctive style of teaching, called the Eight Gates of Zen, involving both monastic and lay students in a program that embraces every aspect of daily life. He is a dharma heir of the influential Japanese Zen master Taizan Maezumi Roshi and is the author of The Heart of Being: Moral and Ethical Teachings of Zen Buddhism.