How Do You Interpret The 9th Ox Herding Picture?

[Joseph Maynor]

I'm curious to hear your ideas.

 

Edited November 28, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[Preetom]

@Joseph Maynor

From Wiki

9. Reaching the Source
Too many steps have been taken
returning to the root and the source.
Better to have been blind and deaf
from the beginning!
Dwelling in one's true abode,
unconcerned with and without -
The river flows tranquilly on
and the flowers are red

My Ideas about it:

It's the completion of the Hero's journey in the ultimate sense. The Hero finds himself at exactly where he started from! In the same hut, just everything is recontextualized. He realizes that he was always nothing but the Self; and all this bull chasing was nothing but exhausting his own folly and delusions.

''Dwelling in one's true abode,
unconcerned with and without''

The absorption into the Self is so deep and complete that there is no Universe anymore. ''From inside the hut, you can't see the outside''. It means when you absorbed into the Self, everything is over. There is nothing else other than the Self.

After this, at 10th stage life goes on as it is destined to, without any interference or resistance.

 

[Joseph Maynor]

@Preetom Thanks.  I will look at it myself and see if I can shed any insight on it as well.

[cetus]

13 hours ago, Preetom said:

@Joseph Maynor

From Wiki

9. Reaching the Source
Too many steps have been taken
returning to the root and the source.
Better to have been blind and deaf
from the beginning!

You let it all disolve. Satori and all.

 

13 hours ago, Preetom said:

Dwelling in one's true abode,
unconcerned with and without -
The river flows tranquilly on
and the flowers are red

You cease to exist and become pure source.

[WelcometoReality]

38 minutes ago, cetus56 said:

You let it all disolve. Satori and all.

 

You cease to exist and become pure source.

Would you call that ego death?

[Joseph Maynor]

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/weai/exeas/resources/oxherding.html

"As the ninth picture shows, when self and reality (as constructs) are left behind, then things are revealed to be just what they are in themselves; streams meander on of themselves and red flowers naturally bloom red.  In the ordinary events of life are found the most profound truths.  Only by seeking the ox as a separate ultimate reality could the oxherd discover that there is no separate reality; that the ultimate is to be found in the ordinary."

This sounds like Stage Coral.  Early Stage Coral.

Edited November 30, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[Haumea2018]

It's like 10, but there's still a subtle duality between the "spiritual" and the "profane."

The world is seen as impure, and there's a desire to isolate oneself from it.

Easy to become a hermit.

At 10, you're "back in the marketplace" i.e. you've accepted the profane as The Self.

[cetus]

On 11/28/2018 at 4:06 PM, WelcometoReality said:

Would you call that ego death?

@WelcometoReality  When you don't exist there is no ego death. There is no one there to have an experience of ego death.