It is so easy for us to fall into a train of delay and re-schedule in our lives: waiting for all the ducks to line up. There is no reason, as Linji says, to defer our life, waiting for some other moment or outcome. Let’s have it right here and right now.

Seeing the Tracks, Seeing the Ox, Ox Forgotten, and Self Forgotten are all varying degrees of emptiness. With the ninth Oxherding Picture, we return to the world of form, but only after having experienced the vast emptiness described in the eighth picture, Both Self and Ox Forgotten.