Finding the Ox

[nasetendo]

As I have said in the past Mr. Lundberg's China Japan class opened my eyes to a lot of philosophy, and religious ideas from the east. A lot of it is very interesting, and I connect right back to my life. One of which is Buddhism, and I connect to the Ten Oxherding pictures a lot. If you do not know them here is a link showing and describing them: http://www.buddhistdoor.com/passissue/9710/sources/art9.htm. The main idea is that during life you go out and search for yourself (the ox), and when you finally find it you have to maintain it until you can finally return to your prior way of life and still stay at equilibrium with yourself. This ties into the teachings of Emerson in his Self-Reliance essay, which Mr. Larson taught us about before. A common idea in both of these is going into isolation, and once you reach self-reliance you are supposed to go back into the world and live among people. Both things have this idea of re-entering the world enlightened someway, and trying to maintain that enlightenment. This is something I really want to do in my life, something I have to try to do. Last night Jessica posted about fake people, and this is totally relevant to that. The idea of going becoming someone who is so in tune with himself that he knows he is not fake, that he knows he is not a hypocrite; someone who knows he is who he is, is just so tempting. I think this is a totally hard goal to work towards, but the reward is just so great, and the challenge is just so awsome.
I must find my ox.
-Nase-