I’d like to start off by reading a fairy tale from Case 2 of the Mumonkan.
Once, when Hyakujo delivered some Zen lectures, an old man attended, unseen by the monks. At the end of each talk, when the monks left, so did he. But one day he remained after they had gone, and Hyakujo asked him, “Who are you?” The old man replied, “I am not a human being, but I was a human being when the Kashapa Buddha preached in this world. I was a Zen master and I was the abbot of this mountain. At that time one of my students asked me whether the enlightened person is subject to the law of causation. I answered him, “An enlightened person is not subject to the law of causation.” For this answer I became a fox for five hundred rebirths, and I am still a fox.
Will you save me from this condition with your Zen words and let me get out of a fox’s body? Now may I ask you: Is the enlightened person subject to the law of causation?” Hyakujo said, “The enlightened person is not blind to the law of causation.” At the words of Hyakujo the old man was enlightened. “I am emancipated," he said, paying homage with a deep bow. “I am no more a fox, but I have to leave my fox body in my dwelling place behind this mountain. Please perform a monk’s funeral for it.” Then he disappeared.
The next day Hyakujo gave an order through the chief monk to prepare for the funeral of a monk. “No one is sick in the infirmary,” wondered the monks. “What does our teacher mean?” After dinner Hyakujo led the monks out and around the mountain. In a cave, with his staff he poked out the corpse of an old fox and then he performed the cremation ceremony. That evening Hyakujo gave a talk to the monks and told them the story about the law of causation.
Obacu, upon hearing this story, asked Hyakujo, “I understand that a long time ago because a certain person gave a wrong Zen answer he became a fox for five hundred rebirths. Now I want to ask: If some modern master is asked many questions, and he always gives the right answer, what will become of him?” Hyakujo said, “Come here near me and I will tell you.” Obacu went near Hyakujo and slapped the teacher’s face. Hyakujo clapped his hands and laughed. “I thought the old barbarian had a red beard,” he said, “and now I know a barbarian right here who has a red beard.”
Mumon's commentary on this case:
“Not subject to causality.” How can this answer cause five hundred rebirths as a fox? “Not blind to causality.” How can this emancipate a fox?” To understand clearly, you have to have just one eye. Then you’ll appreciate how Hyakujo lived five hundred fox lives and five hundred lives of grace.
So I address you this morning as my fellow foxes, and as I asked in my opening remarks, think back: How did you get here? What were all the circumstances that led to your being here, now? In a fairy tale like this, it may seem fantastic to be reborn as a fox, but I woke up this morning, looked in the mirror, and I’d been reborn as a 70 year old man. How did that happen?
This case comes right after the Case of Mu in the Mumonkan. In that case too we have something to do with an animal, a dog instead of a fox. In that one we’re asked Does a dog have buddha nature? In that story, when Joshu answers Mu, literally, No, it’s a No that wipes away all distinctions between the monk who asks, Joshu who answers, the dog, the buddha. It’s just Mu. All difference disappears into that one word, that one moment.
For many of us, that’s what Zen practice is about, or what we imagine it’s about, or even wish it was about. It’s the disappearance of difference into just this, where all the painful particulars of our life and our history disappear. There’s a great erasure, a great dissolving into just the oneness of this moment. And of course we long for that, and of course when we get a taste of it, we try to hold onto it. And yet, right after Mu, we get this story of the old abbot who says that realization frees us and comes from causality. It’s exactly what we’ve experienced in Mu. Exactly what we wanted our practice to do for us.
As a result, he lives 500 lives as a fox. In the Heart Sutra that we chanted this morning, there are the lines No old and death and no end to old age and death. When we practice with Mu, we’ve experienced the first of those lines, No old age and death. When we practice with this koan, we see No end to old age and death. How do those two things go together? How do we see them as saying the same thing?
Obaku, who is Hyakujo’s senior student and will be his dharma successor, upon hearing this story, asks just the right question: The old man became a fox because he gave the wrong answer. What would happen if he gave the right answer? Does the right answer keep you from being reborn as a fox? Does the right answer somehow do the very thing that was asked, free from causation? See, right or wrong, in a sense, has nothing to do with it. We are subject to karma or causality or we can simply say time or history.
You can sit and feel the timelessness of Mu, you can sit with Mu and feel that you’re at one with the old teachers and masters, and yet the next morning you wake up and there’s an old man or an old woman in the mirror. Time has kept going. Whether we understand it or don’t understand it, if we give the right answer or the wrong answer, all that happens is within the world of time and causality. And it asks us in some sense to make our peace with it. This is what Mumon’s comment at the end says: The old man lives 500 years as a fox with grace. The story tells it in a way that, for the old man, being a fox for 500 lives was his punishment. That would be like saying, turning 70 was my punishment. Getting old and dying or getting sick is my punishment. I must have done something wrong. If I’d only given the right answer, eaten the right things, done the right exercises, all this wouldn’t have befallen me.
What we see in this koan is the sacrementalization of the life of the fox. The body of the dead fox is found and cremated as if he were a monk, as if there were no distinctions between monks and foxes. We start off with the sense of right answers and wrong answers, but eventually the distinction dissolves. It dissolves not because we escape from being a fox. It doesn’t dissolve because we give the right answer and therefore somehow … has the punishment of time and causality. It’s because the right answer allows us to see that time and causality is where we live and what our buddha nature actually means, manifesting just this, moment after moment, moment after moment.
But it’s not just this, it’s the void of characteristics. It’s not just this of the clear blue sky, a mind free of thought and feeling, the body free of aches and pains. It’s a “just this” filled with all the particulars of the moment. It’s not this idealized pure moment that we seek in our sitting. But it’s any moment at all. It’s the moment we had when we first sat down this morning, full of hope or dread or expectation. That was it. That was the fox sitting down on the cushion, recognizing there’s no difference between the monk and the fox, and at the same time each is a monk, each is a fox. Each has their very own particular characteristics.
So we go from Mu, where all differences dissolve into just this, to the story of Hyakjo, where all difference stands out vividly, and yet it’s still just this. When we start out in this practice, it seems very, very hard to have that first breakthrough, when all difference is wiped away and there’s just this and Mu. That’s the absolute encountering the relative like two arrows meeting in midair. It seems like this incredibly rare, special occasion. Who could ever believe that happens? And yet, we go on with our practice, where our ordinary life fits the absolute like a box and its lid. They can’t miss. One is completely the shape and form of the other. That’s what we can obtain through understanding this koan.
The relative life of the fox, with all its particulars, all the things we think are not ideal about it, that too is just this. Perfectly. Perfectly living that life of the fox. Perfectly living that life in time and history, the life you already have, the life right now.