Hold the Rope, Carry your Cross: Christianity and the Ten Bull Pictures of Zen

By Andrew McAlister and Laurence Freeman

At their best, spirituality, philosophy, and religion can help us to understand what it is to be human. Zen Buddhism and Christianity do this and do it in surprisingly similar ways. This book uses a re-imagining of Zen's Ten Bull (or Ox-Herding) Pictures, seeing them with a Christian eye. In this, commonalities between Zen and Christianity are drawn out. These include the primacy of now, the challenge of the ego and awareness, emptiness and silence, compassion, as well as the importance of a practice like meditation.

Traditionally, within Zen, verse has been used to accompany the pictures. Here, new verse shapes a Christian approach. As well as this, an introduction and glossary provide explanation and context.

Zen challenges Christianity to its simple depths – a depth named in the introduction as a contemplative heart. At this heart, Christianity moves with Zen. Like Zen, the heart of Christianity is not a place or destination; it is a way of life forgetting itself. For the Christian, this way is love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781922565402

Book preview

Copyright © 2021 Andrew McAlister

ISBN: 978-1-922565-40-2 (eBook)

Published by Vivid Publishing

P.O. Box 948, Fremantle Western Australia 6959

www.vividpublishing.com.au

eBook conversion and distribution by Fontaine Publishing Group, Australia

www.fontaine.com.au

Contact: [e-mail]

Website: linesfrominbetween.com

Text copyright © Andrew McAlister

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Illustrations copyright © Carlos Siqueira

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Every reasonable effort has been made to trace the owners of copyright materials in this book. The publisher will be glad to receive information leading to more complete acknowledgements in subsequent editions of this book and in the meantime, we extend our apologies for any omissions.

Version 1.0. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy-ing, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

‘Save me from the lion’s mouth,

my life from the wild bulls’ horns’ (Psalm 22:21)

‘You give me the strength of the wild ox,

You anoint me with fresh oil. (Psalm 92:10)

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

The Search for the Bull

Discovering the Footprints

Perceiving the Bull

Catching the Bull

Taming the Bull

Riding the Bull Home

The Bull Transcended

Both Bull and Self Transcended

Reaching the Source

In the World

Ten Bulls Glossary of Terms

Recommended Reading

Bibliography

Andrew McAlister is an oblate of The World Community for Christian Meditation. He has been practicing meditation for nearly thirty years. Andrew spent some twenty years working in youth work, residential care, and counselling while studying psychology, theology, and spirituality. He now lives and writes in Bathurst, NSW, Australia.

Carlos Siqueira is also an oblate of The World Community for Christian Meditation. He has been practicing meditation for twenty-­five years. Carlos is a Yoga Teacher and lives in the countryside of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Laurence Freeman is the spiritual director of The World Community for Christian Meditation and director of The WCCM’s international retreat centre, Bonnevaux, in south-west France.

Dedications

Andrew: for my mum, Marie (1944-2015); now Marie Christ.

Carlos: to my daughter, Bianca. To my teacher, Fr. Laurence.

Acknowledgements

Andrew

Thank you, Carlos for the wonderful pictures.

Thank you, Fr. Laurence for your support, friendship, and guidance, both during this project and over the years; and for writing a very thoughtful foreword.

Thanks to Stefan Reynolds for his editing and suggestions, and for his guidance; as well as Subhana Barzaghi Roshi and Jeff Ward Roshi for valuable feedback.

Thank you to the community at Bonnevaux.

Thanks also to Cam for the roof, desk, bed, cat, and brotherhood; and to Karen and Chris for your friendship and dining table – may you all ‘Catch Bull at Four’.

Carlos

Thank you, Andrew for inviting me to do the drawings for this book.

Thank you, Fr. Laurence for your guidance, friendship, and all I have learnt with you.

Foreword

By Laurence Freeman OSB

Reading Andrew McAlister’s commentary on the classical Zen series of ten Ox-Herding pictures, and then looking again at the pictures themselves I found two lines of inquiry coming to mind.

Firstly, comparison with other series of images that illustrate, crystal-clearly but non-conceptually, an essential spiritual truth. We could think, for example, of the series of six small stone carvings in the North portal of Chartres Cathedral illustrating the ‘stages’ of contemplation. A woman sits with a book. She opens it, reads, ponders and interiorises what she has read, enters into ecstasy and then teaches. Comparing it with the ten stages of the way in the Ten Bull Pictures – I am not sure I agree with Andrew about preferring to be a bull rather than an ox! – suggest a universal wisdom finding expression in different spiritual cultures.

Stages of a spiritual journey are never strictly linear and so are often depicted in cyclical images, such as the Labyrinth on the floor of Chartres. Progress there is, but concealed in a perception of repetition, covering the same ground but at deeper levels. The Bull pictures describe consecutive stages but within these lies the intuition of a reality unfolding towards us from within. Perhaps