禪宗「十牛圖頌」之文本分析

An Analysis of Literary Text: The Zen Ten Ox-Herding Pictures

This paper aims to analyze the renown Ten Ox-Herding Pictures as a literary text in order to provide a thought-provoking link between traditional Zen thought and literary texts with spiritual and psycho-therapeutic ideas. The Zen Ten Ox-Herding Pictures originated in 12th century China as an allegorical illustration of man's quest for enlightenment or his true nature. The ten stages of Ox-Herding Pictures are depicted below: 1. Seeking the ox; 2. Finding the tracks; 3. Seeing the ox; 4. Catching the ox; 5. Taming the ox; 6. Riding the ox home; 7. Ox forgotten, self alone; 8. Both ox and self forgotten; 9. Returning to the source; and 10. Entering the marketplace with helping hands. In the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures an ox herd and an ox are depicted. In the pictures the ox represents Buddhist nature or one's true self, the essential self which we are seeking. The ox herd represents humanity, symbolizing the self of the phenomenal world that wants very much to grasp the essential self. The ox herd (the self of the phenomenal world) is, in fact, always seeking something like human self-questing. The paths of the ox herd's seeking self depicted by the ten pictures are perhaps analogous to the levels of spiritual development also described by Christian mystics. Furthermore, applying the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures to the interpretation of literary texts is feasible. So this paper also suggests that the mental processes and spiritual journeys of self-questing for enlightenment in Chuang Tsu's I Dreamt I was a Butterfly, William Wordsworth's The Prelude, and Henry David Thoreau's Walden can be illustrated and explored well by the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures.本文研究禪宗《十牛圖頌》之文本分析，建議結合禪觀與文本，提供精神啟發與心理治療觀念。《十牛圖頌》起源於中國十二世紀，是一種用「圖說」及「偈頌」的方式來譬喻「自我追尋」的十種心路歷程：「尋牛」，「見跡」、「見牛」、「得牛」、「牧牛」、「騎牛歸家」、「忘牛存人」、「人牛俱忘」、「返本還源」、「入纏垂手」，十個不同的境界。「牛」，譬喻人的心念，如牛般，很難調伏。想調伏必須經歷十種心的境界及相當耐力與智慧。此過程也與基督教神秘主義有異曲同工之妙。本文更運用《十牛圖頌》來詮釋中西文本，例如中國《莊子》之「齊物論」（Chuang Tsu’s I Dreamt I was a Butterfly）、英國詩人渥滋華斯自傳詩作《序曲》（William Wordsworth's The Prelude）及美國詩人梭羅返璞歸真、探索生命之作《湖濱散記》（ Henry David Thoreau’s Walden）。