Buddhist: cattle and tradition
Yak and cattle in the monasteries of Tibet and Bhutan, and the release of animals as an act of merit.
Buddhism grew up in a farming world where cattle were part of every village, and the ox and the cow appear often in its stories. The Buddha's first meditation is said to have come to him as a boy during a ploughing festival, and before his awakening a young woman named Sujata offered him a bowl of rice cooked in milk. In Tibet, Bhutan and the Himalaya, the yak gives butter for monastery lamps. Across Buddhist Asia, freeing animals from slaughter is an act of merit, and the Zen ox-herding pictures use the ox as a picture of the mind.
The ploughing festival and Sujata
Tradition tells that the young Siddhartha, sitting under a rose-apple tree while his father led the royal ploughing festival, fell into a deep meditation for the first time. Years later, weak from fasting, he accepted a bowl of milk-rice from Sujata, a village woman near Bodh Gaya, and soon after reached awakening. The story is retold in Buddhist countries, and royal ploughing ceremonies in Thailand, Cambodia and Sri Lanka keep the link between Buddhism, the ox and the rice field.
The ox in the Jataka tales
The Jataka tales, stories of the Buddha's earlier lives, include several in which he is born as a bull or ox. In the Nandivisala Jataka, a bull refuses to pull a hundred carts when his owner speaks to him harshly, but pulls them easily when spoken to kindly. The lesson, that kind speech brings good results, is told to children across South and Southeast Asia.
Yak, butter and the monastery
In Tibet, Ladakh, Bhutan and the Himalaya of Nepal, yak and dzomo milk gives butter for lamps that burn before images in monasteries and homes, for salted butter tea and for torma, the sculpted offerings made for ceremonies. At Losar, the Tibetan new year, butter sculptures and lamps are made in great numbers. Monasteries in herding country often hold herds of their own, cared for by nearby families.
Release and the ox-herding pictures
Tsethar, life release, is a practice of saving an animal from slaughter and letting it live out its life. In Tibetan areas, released yak and sheep are often marked with coloured ribbons and left to graze freely near monasteries. In Zen Buddhism, the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures show a herder searching for, finding, taming and riding home an ox, a picture of the path of practice. The best-known version is attributed to the Chinese master Kuoan Shiyuan in the twelfth century.
Worth knowing
- Sujata: Offered milk-rice to the Buddha
- Nandivisala Jataka: The bull who answered kindness
- Ten Ox-Herding Pictures: Zen pictures of the path
- Tsethar: Release of animals to live out their lives
- Butter lamps: Lamps of yak butter in monasteries
- Royal Ploughing Ceremony: Ox ceremony of Buddhist Southeast Asia
Sources and further reading
Original text by the EveryCow desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Customs are described as tradition, not as advice. If we have something wrong, tell us.
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