Originally Posted by This Anhedonia Trap

Seriously though about themes on the album, I was recently reminded of zen buddhisms "10 ox herding pictures" and have been reading/looking at different variations of them online. It's just been something I've been playing around with in my head, and today I came back to one of the first sites I went to, http://www.jaysquare.com/ljohnson/ox-herding.html#1 , and thought it was interesting to see the reoccuring use of the 10,000, ("in Chinese culture, 10,000 = infinity!" or so says this website) that might put an interesting twist and add another angle to the albums title? I dunno, if I had more time to play with these ideas maybe I'd come up with something worthwhile, but I'm in the middle of june/july intensive courses to finish my degree in august. What do you guys think?

Vicarious could correspond to the first picture, "In the frenzy of our desparate quest we ignore our immediate surroundings, mesmerized by the distant majestic peaks of our imagined destination."

Also, the 10th picture could correspond to Right in Two, the wording of the text w/ picture 10 at http://www.buddhanet.net/oxherd1.htm would makes this seem like a more obvious connection.

I wish I had more time to look at the other songs and see if there appear to be more connections. Or at least see if I could make them up to myself...hah. Maybe someone else already posted this...I haven't seen it, however.

Originally Posted by Absolute_Zero

I think this seems like an extremely productive and interesting line of thought. I've done a little research into the 15th century 10-panel series 'Ten Oxherding Pictures' (while working on an article about Charles Johnson's novel 'Oxherding Tale'). From what I understand, the panels depict an allegorical search for the 'self' in the quest for enlightenment. The herder represents man, and the ox represents the 'self,' The panels depct a young herder searching for his 'lost' ox. The 8th panel (at least in the orginal series) depicts nothing but an empty circle: it is meant to represent the attainment of enlightenment in the realization that there is no division between the self and the universe; that there is no you 'you and I' nor any 'us or them'; only us. Ultimately, the panels are meant to disavow the existence of binary opposition and division (especially with respect to dualistic conceptions of mind/body and self/other). Certainly this has alot of ressonance with Maynard's lyrics in many of his projects (e.g. 'you will come to find that we are all one mind').
Sadly, I too am unable to pursue this line of thinking futher--I am in the throws of completing my MA thesis at the moment, so extra-curricular research (no matter how interesting) is a temporal impossibility for me.
Any takers though? I'd be happy to share relevant links and notes I have compiled...