Withdrawal and Self-Formation : Based on The Ten Oxherding Pictures

Abstract

Most of educational issues such as school refusal and bullying in modern society are deeply concerned with self-alienation of children. The number of children who can't accept themselves are increasing. As the result, some children are frightened of others and some are agressive to others. Children withdraw from the world into themselves. I consider the Ten Oxherding Pictures as phenomenology of self and explicate the process of self-formation. The Ten Oxherding Pictures is a story which draws the growth of self. Each of ten pictures expresses a facet of self and as the whole it shows the basic thought of Zen. The result of explication is that self is not the substance but the process itself which contains two moments, negation and unity. Self merged nature and others through negating itself. We have to encounter what are resistant to us in order to be ourselves and nature and others give us such resistance.