Dear Taigu,

Thank you, thank you for taking us through the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures over these past months. It was an absolutely delightful walk with you. Today's last picture really hit home for me personally. Not only does the picture look remarkably like me in my samue (tummy and all :lol: ) but the message was received in my open ear, heart and mind.

You said that here we are "comoing down from the hermitage to learn, study and open yourself in activity and listening". I had to stop the video and replay that several times, because there I am, not only in an uncanny likeness on the paper, but also in the action of my life since coming to Treeleaf. Too often the hermit sees the hermitage as a finality, a place where he stays from now on. He does not see it as a place from which he can spring into life with a new freedom to experience that life. Too often the hermit makes sitting in the hermitage the end of his life, and a place from which others can see him doing just that. What a trap! Instead of seeeing the freedom the hermitage is offering , he sees it only as the slowly closing coffin lid.

Well for me, I enjoy going down from the hermitage to the marketplace and meeting with a new situation that can open up my interest and to learn something, to see that I have learned something while I worked away in my solitude. This series was very joyfully received by at least this one old hermit as he walks down into the market,

trying not to be noticed

Gassho,

Kyrill Seishin