The ten ox-herding pictures.
Searching for the ox, finding tracks, glimpsing it, catching it, taming it, riding home, forgetting the ox, forgetting both ox and self — an empty circle, the eighth frame, where most people assume the story ends. It does not. The ninth returns to the world as it is: a river flows, flowers bloom. The tenth shows an old man with a fat belly walking into town with his hands open.
The ox-herding pictures are Chan's answer to the question of what happens after awakening, and the answer is deliberately anticlimactic. The ox is the mind; the sequence runs from searching, through glimpsing and taming, to riding it home. The eighth frame is an empty circle — both ox and self forgotten — and it is where Western reproductions frequently stop, which inverts the teaching. Two frames follow: the world returning exactly as it was, and the practitioner walking back into town, described as fat, cheerful, indistinguishable from anyone else, and quietly useful. Nothing supernatural is claimed for the finished person, which is the point being made.
The same ground, other faiths
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