The Ten Bulls as a Map to Awakening: How the Search for the Ox Teaches Us to Meet Ourselves

What It Means to Search for the Ox

The Ten Bulls (jūgyūzu) is a classic Zen text composed of ten images and accompanying verses attributed to the Song-dynasty Chinese master Kuoan Shiyuan. It portrays the stages of Zen practice through a herdsboy who searches for a runaway ox, finds it, captures it, tames it, rides it home, and ultimately forgets both the ox and himself. The ox has long been understood as a symbol of the True Self — who we originally are before titles and roles. For modern readers the story feels surprisingly close. Layer upon layer of positions, responsibilities, and other people's expectations gradually bury the question, 'Who was I, really?' On the morning commute, catching your reflection in the train window, you might feel a quiet pang: 'Is this person really me?' In that instant you are already standing in the first of the ten stages — 'Searching for the Ox' — right beside the herdsboy himself. The Ten Bulls endures today because awakening here is not some exotic event but the universal story of anyone who has lost themselves slowly finding their way home.

Stages One Through Three: Finding the Tracks

The ten pictures fall naturally into three clusters of three, plus the final two. In the first, 'Searching for the Ox,' the boy simply looks. No road is visible; he has no idea which way to go. What matters is that he has started to look at all. Noticing that something has gone missing is itself the gate of practice. In the second, 'Finding the Tracks,' footprints appear. Reading scriptures, listening to a teacher, the practitioner senses, 'It seems the answer is somewhere within me.' The tracks are not the ox itself — but now there is a direction. In the third, 'Seeing the Ox,' the animal finally comes into view: the tip of a tail, a flash of a horn. Not the whole, but clearly 'there.' For most of us this corresponds to a fleeting moment on the cushion when thinking stops and only breath remains. The crucial point is not to halt here in celebration. What was glimpsed is only a part. Many practitioners have mistaken this stage for final awakening — and the old masters warn sternly against it.

Stages Four Through Six: Catching and Riding Home

The middle three pictures show the struggle and reconciliation with the newfound ox. In the fourth, 'Catching the Ox,' the boy throws a rope around it, but the animal is wild and pulls back. This is the phase after insight, when old emotions and habits still buck against awareness. You resolve never to snap in anger again, and the very next morning a comment from your boss sends you over the edge. The fifth, 'Taming the Ox,' the animal begins to follow. A gentle tug is enough; it no longer needs to be forced. One's relationship with feelings and thoughts becomes natural. On a night when I was stuck on a work problem, I kept returning to slow breathing, and one day I noticed something odd: the moment I became aware of my impatience, the impatience itself seemed to shrink a little. Not forced down, just followed by being seen — that quiet experience turned out to map, in retrospect, onto this very stage. In the sixth, 'Riding the Ox Home,' the boy rides back on its back, playing a flute. What was once wild is now the best of companions. Feelings and thoughts are not enemies but part of oneself.

Stages Seven and Eight: The Deepening of Forgetting

The later images can feel especially puzzling to modern readers. In the seventh, 'Ox Forgotten, Self Remains,' the boy arrives home and suddenly notices the ox is no longer there. More precisely, there is no longer any need to think about it. Just as you stop consciously checking that your breathing has deepened, one's original nature simply blends into daily life and ceases to feel remarkable. In the eighth, 'Both Ox and Self Forgotten,' both boy and ox vanish, and only a single circle — the famous ensō — remains. Even the frame of the 'self' who once practiced, who once sought awakening, dissolves. Trying to grasp this stage intellectually always fails. Zen calls it the 'great death': unless one dies utterly once, one cannot truly live. In a trivial conversation with family you may occasionally notice, 'Just now, I disappeared' — choosing words carefully yet unable to find anyone doing the choosing. Many people encounter something like this at least once in life. That is only the doorway into the circle of the eighth image.

Stages Nine and Ten: Returning to the World

The most beautiful part of the Ten Bulls lies in the final two pictures. In the ninth, 'Returning to the Source,' only natural scenery appears: flowers bloom, a river flows. The world one sees after awakening is the 'same' world as before. The smell of morning coffee, the light through the window, the soft breathing of your family — nothing has changed. But the mind looking at it has cleared, and so the same scene feels utterly different. In the tenth, 'Entering the Marketplace with Helping Hands,' the boy — now depicted like the cheerful Hotei — walks back into town and mingles with ordinary people. An awakened person does not retreat to the mountains; they return among human beings. This is Zen's ideal. Someone who holds down a job, raises a family, rides crowded trains, and yet carries quietness deep within — this is the destination the Ten Bulls points to. Strikingly, the final image resembles the first. The only difference is that nothing is being searched for anymore. The end of the journey is the same place as its beginning.

Why Ten Images, Not Three

'Why ten pictures instead of three?' is a question Zen monks debated even before Kuoan. In fact, earlier versions with eight images exist, as does Puming's 'Ten Bulls' in which the ox is gradually whitened to show progress through color. Kuoan's version spread because it refuses to end with 'attained, done.' It portrays a round trip: having attained, one forgets; having forgotten, one returns to the marketplace. A classic trap for practitioners sits precisely here. After a little taste of stillness, one concludes, 'I have changed,' and begins to look down on ordinary life. The Ten Bulls quietly dismantles this pride. Do not stop at Seeing the Ox. Do not settle at Catching the Ox. Even Riding the Ox Home is not the end. The very length of ten images carries the message, 'The path still continues.' At the tenth, Entering the Marketplace, awakening finally dissolves not into a special experience but into the figure of one who mingles with others in ordinary life. What sets Zen slightly apart from other contemplative traditions is precisely this insistence on 'returning.' Come down from the mountain; laugh with neighbors while choosing vegetables. That plainness is the destination of the ten-picture journey.

Reading the Ten Bulls into Daily Life

The Ten Bulls is not a text you read once and close. Different images rise up depending on the season of your life. Bumping against a wall at work, the roughness of 'Catching the Ox' resonates. When family life softens for a while, 'Riding the Ox Home' comes to mind. One practical exercise is to write down, once a month, which of the ten images you most resemble now. If you are at the first stage, you are still searching, and there is no need to rush. If you are at the fifth, it is evidence that your relationship with your emotions is gradually becoming gentler. Use the images not to judge yourself, but as a map on which to locate, 'I am here right now.' A second practice: at the end of the day, ask yourself just one question — 'Was there a moment today when I did not lose sight of the ox?' A moment of anger noticed in a meeting; a single breath before reacting to a family member's tone. However small, it counts. Tracks, the ox, the rope — every stage of the Ten Bulls appears in ordinary life. The text is not a relic of the past but a mirror of today. And in the end the destination is not some mountain peak. It is the middle of an unremarkable morning — making tea, saying good morning to your family — where, quietly, the boy and the ox come home.