I gave this talk on August 6, 2025, at Full Moon Zen’s Sunrise Sit. A recording follows the text.

This is Case 49, Where the Path Leads, in The Sayings of Layman P’ang:

One day the Layman saw a young boy herding oxen and asked him, “Where does this path we’re following lead to?”

The boy said, “I don’t know where it goes.”

The Layman said, “Aren’t you herding the oxen?”

The boy said, “They live in these fields.”

The Layman said, “What time of day is it anyway?”

The boy said, “It’s time to take the oxen to pasture.”

The Layman laughed heartily.

Let’s take this wonderful story line-by-line.

One day the Layman saw a young boy herding oxen and asked him, “Where does this path we’re following lead to?”

P’ang is an acknowledged Zen master and his question is the sort of coy one you’d expect from a teacher. One of those questions that seems ordinary and innocent enough but is probing the depth of your insight (and your sense of humor). But is that really what’s happening here? P’ang is the trickster who knows all the holier-than-though monks in the region and takes great pleasure in one-upping them. I’m inclined to think he’s in unfamiliar territory, is innocently asking this young stranger for directions, and is about to get beaten at his own game.

The boy said, “I don’t know where it goes.”

The boy’s opening line reminds me of something my eldest, who’s now 20, said when he was four or five. Esther and I were in our bedroom and one of was griping about something a parent or sibling had done. As I walked out of the room, I said, “Well, you know what they say: You can’t choose your family.” 

We didn’t realize our son had been just outside listening the whole time. Without missing a beat, he lit up and exclaimed, “Yeah, and you can’t even choose yourself!”

Wisdom from the mouth of babes. Does anyone really know what this is, who we are, and where we’re going?

The Layman said, “Aren’t you herding the oxen?”

Now we begin to sense P’ang knows he’s bumbled into a trap and may have met his match. “Okay, little sage, so seemingly self-possessed, surely you imagine you’re in charge and leading the way here?”

P’ang’s second question is anything but innocent. It’s a joust to the boy’s parry. The boy is herding ox, but will he recognize and has he tamed the ox I’m talking about? 

Has he discovered his wandering small mind situated in and as Big Mind , as we see in Zen’s famous Ox Herding pictures? Has his small mind been weened of the illusion that it’s the center of the universe and locus of ultimate control?

The boy’s response?

The boy said, “They live in these fields.”

Touché!

There’s a footnote in the text which says, “The sense of this statement is that the oxen know where they are going.”

Indeed. Let me read you a short passage about dealing with distractions in meditation that makes the boy’s point more explicitly. This is from a wonderful new book, Zen Pathways: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of Zen Buddhism, by Bret Davis, an American Rinzai teacher and philosophy professor who has extensive practice experience in Japan. Drawing inspiration from Shunryu Suzuki, founder of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center and the San Francisco Zen Center, Davis writes:

Another teaching Suzuki Roshi gives in this regard goes even deeper and wider. He says: If you want to control your mischievous mind, don’t try to control it. Don’t try to pin it down or confine it to a mental jail cell. Do the opposite and give it a wide-open space in which to roam. Using another vivid metaphor, he says: “To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him.” That wide-open pasture is an image for what he and other Zen masters call “Big Mind.” All the thoughts and distractions of our small minds take place within a wide-open and non-judgmental field of awareness.

The Layman said, “What time of day is it anyway?”

P’ang, still fancying himself the teacher, hasn’t yet admitted defeat. We get another checking question, but who’s checking whom?

The boy said, “It’s time to take the oxen to pasture.”

Enough of this stuff about emptiness, Old Man. Bye, now. The cows and I are hungry. It’s time to eat.

The Layman laughed heartily.

May we all learn not to take ourselves too seriously and come to laugh this cosmic laugh with Layman P’ang.