Page 16 - Winter 20-21

Ten Ox-herding pictures by Peter Gregory, UK
In a meeting of a group of Buddhist friends recently (by Zoom of course) I was reminded by our teachers of the “Ten Ox-herding Pictures”, which depict the spiritual progression of a Zen student. The author is said to be a Zen master of the Sung Dynasty known as Kaku-an Shi- en belonging to the Rinzai school. He also wrote poems and introductory words for each picture.
I believe the stages are universal, and apply to anyone seeking their inner truth, wherever they may find it, but I also believe they are relevant to our personal progression in learning homeopathy; they certainly resonated with my own journey, so I though it might be interesting to look at them from a homeopathic perspective. The pictures I am using were painted by Shubun, a Zen priest of the fifteenth century. The original pictures are preserved at Shokokuji, Kyoto. He was one of the greatest painters in black and white in the Ashikaga period. I plan to take them one at a time and see how it goes. Instead of the original commentaries I will try and add a haiku for each one. I hope you may find it interesting and I don’t find I am being too ambitious!
Picture 2 ‘Seeing the Traces’
In this picture the oxherder is looking around – for what he doesn’t really know. Something is missing but he doesn’t know where to look. Then suddenly he sees, among the grass and the trees, the faintest of footprints. He doesn’t know who or what made them or where they will lead - but he decides to investigate.
This is the point at which we decide to do something about our dissatisfaction. We look around; maybe we browse the book shelves and the notice board of the local health food shop. We browse the internet for ‘alternative
therapies’. We read about acupuncture, herbalism, aromatherapy and flower remedies. Maybe a colleague or a client mentions homeopathy. We
find a book and read about it. We are attracted to
the philosophy of homeopathy and its different understanding of health and disease, but we stop
there. We just read about it. So very little changes;
we continue to have the same difficulty with our veterinary practice, limited by our orthodox view and
the medicines on the shelf. But we are aware there is something else out there - another way of helping our patients. Something very different from what we learnt at veterinary school. Something that makes sense.
Another question arises. Are the footprints old or new? Is homeopathy just something relevant to the past or can it provide a way of healing which is relevant to the modern day?
My early wanderings took in herbalism, acupuncture and chiropractic. I did a lot of greyhound work, and one vet from Melbourne, Alex Hauler, had developed a form of manipulating greyhounds to deal with muscle strains. This was probably my first step into holism. The tears of the long head of the triceps were not just random injuries – they had their root in the intervertebral facet joint of the cervico-thoracic spine; the ‘track leg’(a haematoma caused by concussion of the elbow against the inside of the tibia) had its origin in the lumbosacral area, where a fixation was causing an otherwise imperceptible abnormal gait.
Another vet, David Gilchrist promoted the use of acupuncture, again in greyhounds. He talked about Qi – ‘energy’. I bought the respective manuals of these
practitioners – and read them. I still have them on my bookshelf, though they are now well used. I came across homeopathy when a client refused the corticosteroids I offered for her dog’s eczema and returned some time later for a different problem, with the eczema cured. She told me she had done it with homeopathic sulphur, but my interest about dose rates rapid brought the conversation to a close. So while I encountered these therapies, none of them really inspired me enough to do more than dabble with them. But I had come to believe that the search was not futile Furthermore I found myself undergoing a similar process on a personal level, culminating in a return to UK, via
Southeast Asia.
Becoming clearer
There’s something out there Can’t quite see it...yet
14