The ox is capable of carrying burdens; the cow is less capable of carrying burdens. So the point of this slogan is that you do not transfer your heavy load to someone who is weaker than you. Transferring the ox's load to the cow means not wanting to deal with anything on your own. You don't want to take the responsibilities; you just pass them on to your secretary or your friends or anybody you can just order about. In English this is called "passing the buck". Doing that is a bad idea, since we are supposed to be cutting down chaos and creating less traffic in the samsaric world altogether. We are supposed to be cutting down on administrative problems and trying to sort things out. We could invite other people to be our helpers, but we cannot pass the buck to them. So don't transfer the ox's load to the cow.

From TRAINING THE MIND by Chgyam Trungpa, 1993 by Diana Mukpo.
Published by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston.