Oxherding Buddha: Buddha’s Teachings Restored in Zen Oxherding Pictures

Instructor(s): Mu Soeng

Program Description:

The “oxherding pictures” offer a visual mapping of the process of awakening, of navigating the suffering and despair in our human condition, to being in the world in ways that are helping and caring without clinging. These pictures have been a teaching device for numerous generations of Zen students in China, Japan, and Korea, and they speak equally eloquently to our own contemporary human situation. The intention of this program is to resituate and recontextualize Buddha’s classical teachings in these pictures and to reconnect with Buddha’s instructions on awakening in this very life.

About the Instructor(s):
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  Mu Soeng

  Mu Soeng is Scholar Emeritus at BCBS. He trained in the (Korean) Zen tradition and was a monk for eleven years. He is the author of Thousand Peaks: Korean Zen (Tradition and Teachers); The Diamond Sutra: Transforming the Way We Perceive the World; Trust in Mind: The Rebellion of Chinese Zen; The Heart of the Universe: Exploring the Heart Sutra, and co-author of Older and Wiser: Classical Buddhist Teachings on Aging, Sickness, and Death.