Forgive me for bubbling this one back up, I won't make it a habit; but I have been wondering whether anyone with an afterthought might have further comment
Also, meantime I have encountered in Osho several more puzzling if not egregious instances. For example, on page 58 he makes reference to a Zen allegory with an illustration where a bewildered fellow "...sees the back of the ox standing in the thick forest," though the plate itself shows him observing it head-on, and not in a thick forest but across the banks of a stream
I feel bewildered too
Damnation, dalehileman, you see heads when you should be seeing butts.
The old Zen story is allegorical not literal. You should be looking for the meaning of the allegory rather than looking for a forest through the trees.
But I see that Osho doesn't know the meaning of the allegory either so I'll give you this...
The two thousand year old panels are teaching aids about life.
Each of the ten paintings represents a phase of graduated understanding between the reflective man and life.
First, with wisdom, when the driving dynamics of youth lose their vigor, we then lose ourselves and our programed reason for our being.
Then many of us set out to find our ox (our selves) by looking within, and without, in all the wrong places.
After a time we began to understand that only by looking at the world in a different way can we find our oxselves. But in time, some do.
Hurrah! Now we can tie down the ox of our biological nature and for the first time in our lives we are in control of ourselves. We are very happy, so naturally we go out and get drunk.
Now we reach the ninth panel, the blank panel, the uninscribed panel, that by it's blankness instructs us that reunion with the nothingness of being is bliss ( but not really bliss because bliss is something and nothingness is nothingness and not bliss.)
And finally the tenth panel. The drunken panel, the panel that instructs us to live happily on Earth amongst our own kind until we die and reach nirvana.
O' happy day.
