THE TEN OXHERDING PICTURES | 十牛圖 | VIII. Man and Ox Both Forgotten
"Whip and tether, man and ox all empty;
The vast blue sky difficult to fathom.
How can a snowflake survive inside a fiery stove?
Now I join the enlightened ones of the past."
While Stage VII was categorized by the ox being integrated into self and thus transcended, in Stage VIII both body and mind, self and other fall completely away. Our body then extends in the ten directions - there are no distinctions. As such, we abide neither in enlightenment or delusion - both are void.
Remember back in Stage III we talked about how the glue that holds the small self together was starting to become less effective. Now the self, once transformed, is utterly shot through. This is the dharmakaya, the first of the three bodies of a Buddha (awakened one) in our Mahayana tradition. Dharmakaya is the body of absolute reality itself - it takes on no form of its own. We are identified with everything that is. This emptiness is the vast blue sky that cannot be reached by thoughts - as the skandhas lose their hold here, like snowflakes in a firey stove.
As the Heart Sutra lays out, this place of absolute wisdom is beyond pain and suffering. The wisdom here is not fully actualized, however. Daido Roshi points out that nearly half of the koans in the classic collections speak to getting stuck here and the possibility of turning a blind eye to the world's suffering.
In some schools of Buddhism, this is the apex of spiritual development, the attainment of shunyata. For the Bodhisattva, however, this is not a place to dwell. There is full actualization in line with our vows that compels us to press on.
