Taming the Bull
Separating yourself from your true nature, you imagine you must force the ox to obey. This error will be self-proving until you understand that your Buddha-nature is naturally satisfied, naturally gentle. The whip and rope were themselves their only justification. No effort is required, everything, including all the phenomena which are you, are simply what they are. Understanding that your thoughts are phenomena like all others, they will at last appear as they are, all true to themselves; beyond the delusions of true and false. Then you will understand that immediate reality is the gateway to enlightenment and the Lord Buddha's touching the ground is opening the "gate", which only illusion sees.
Here as in all the first six of these pictures there's the fundamental defect of the duality of two selves: the self of everyday life and the self of our Buddha-nature. Not only is this, like all dualities, false; but the illusion of even one self is itself false as a violation of the doctrine of the non-existence of self. Perhaps the answer is that we must crawl before we can walk. However crawling is not a means of learning to walk, which requires the rejection of crawling.
Love Always
mudra