Fox Koan

• Introduction
• The Fox Koan

Introduction

Please note that the names Zhang and Hua are "typically" family names (Surnames / Last Names) and that in China (and other countries), the family name comes first.

In China, if your name was Bob Smith in English, you would be referred to as Smith Bob especially in official paperwork like ID card, license etc.

For example, Mulan's family name was HUA. Yet she is called Hua Mulan.

Some countries with this naming system are China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Hungary, Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia. It is possible that the European countries may be a left-over effect from the Mongol invasions?

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The Fox Koan (百丈と狐)

Let Us Begin

Around the beginning of the ninth century, in China, an abbot called Hua Ihai but referred to as Bai Zhang for the mountain in which his monastery was nestled, was one of the great Zen masters.

His monastic rule would become the standard for the Zen community.

Fiercely committed to a life of meditation and work, seeing them as two facets of "The Way", he lived by the precept "a day of no work is a day of no eating."

The abbot was in the habit of giving talks that were open to anyone.

At some point he noticed within the congregation an old man who had something peculiar about him, like an aura, but of what sort, Bai Zhang couldn't say.

The old man would always stand near the back of the assembly, and would vanish before the abbot could speak with him.

Finally, one day, the old man lingered and Bai Zhang said to him, "Who are you? Or, should I say, what are you? and, why are you coming here?"

The old man smiled thinly, bowed, and said, "You're very perceptive. I am in fact not a human being".

"Many ages ago I was abbot on this mountain, heading an assembly of monks following "The Way"."

"A sincere student of "The Way" came to me and asked if someone who had awakened to their true nature, who saw clearly the play of life and death, and had achieved wisdom, was that person bound by the laws of cause and effect?"

The old man paused.

"And," asked Bai Zhang, "what did you say?"

The old man shuddered. "I said such a person is not bound by the laws of cause and effect."

There was a horrific silence that felt like endless suffering. Bai Zhang thought perhaps he smelled the whiff of sulfur.

Finally, the old man added, "And ever since then I've been reincarnating as a fox. So far, five hundred times."

You need to understand a fox spirit in ancient China was considered as a very bad thing, a malevolent being, very dangerous. Big-time bad karma.

The ghost leaned close to Bai Zhang, his breath smelling of rotten flesh. Bai Zhang could see his eyes had no whites and his teeth weren't human, but razor sharp, like a fox's. "Please," the spirit begged. "Say a turning word, and free me from this hell."

A turning word. I think probably we've all encountered such a thing in our lives. A friend says something; maybe we even read it somewhere.

Maybe we've heard it a thousand times before, but this time we get it, we finally understand the significance of the word or words - and from that moment, our life shifts, and we pivot and go in a new direction.

"Turning words" are part of the human mystery that we have a hand in our destiny, we can make decisions, we can change course.

Bai Zhang didn't hesitate. He replied, "A true person of "The Way", who has achieved wisdom, is at one with the laws of cause and effect."

Another translation of these words says, "That person does not avoid the laws."

And another says, "The wise person does not obscure the laws." Don't obscure, do not avoid, be at one with.

Side Note: You may have heard the expressions to "flow like water" or "to be like a corner in an empty room"?

Cause and effect relates to us as much as anything else. We, are but seconds of existence in a great play of events and yet we are bound together in the interconnected web of creation.

Side Note: You cannot take a cup or bucket of water out of the ocean of life without that exact area being replaced immediately and while you may think that you have your bucket of water, it will eventually evaporate and return back to the ocean.

Side Note: As King Solomon said, "all rivers flow into the sea but the sea is never full".

Everything is connected. Out of that realization we see that everything counts. Every action, every thought has consequences.

The story continues.

The ghost made bows, exclaiming that he had truly heard, truly understood, and this was his last incarnation as a fox spirit.

He then added, "My body lies a ways away on the other side of this mountain.

Would you please find it and give me a monk's funeral?" Bai Zhang agreed and the fox spirit disappeared, and the sulfur smell was also gone.

In its place there was a lingering odor of sweet grass.

The abbot called for his assistant and told him to announce to the community that after the noon meal there would be a monastic funeral.

When they heard this, the monks were confused. No one was in the medical hut, so one monk asked. "What does this mean?"

So after the noon meal they all followed the old abbot as he walked out of the monastery and on until he came to a spot where he took his staff and poked about and prodded out the corpse of a fox.

They returned and gave the fox a suitable funeral, burning the body and scattering the ashes.

That evening Bai Zhang told his assembly the whole story. His senior student Huang Bo stood up and said, "Sir, what if the old abbot had given the right answer every time? What would have happened then?"

Bai Zhang smiled, fingering his teacher's stick, and said, "Come here, Huang Bo, and I'll tell you." Here is a dangerous moment, if a somewhat different danger than between the fox and Bai Zhang, to encounter a Zen teacher with a stick in his or her hand.

Huang Bo would become another of the teachers who created what we call Zen (Japanese) which is called Chán (禅) in Chinese. According to traditional sources he was a giant of a man, standing nearly seven feet tall, while his teacher was barely five feet, short even for those days.

When the younger monk walked up to his teacher, just before coming face to face and just out of reach from his teacher's stick, Huang Bo reached out and slapped the old abbot.

As for Bai Zhang, the old abbot laughed and laughed, and declared, "They say the barbarian has a red beard, but here's a red-bearded barbarian."

This is not quite as obscure as perhaps it sounds. The red-bearded barbarian is the founder of Zen, Bodhi-dharma - a barbarian because he came from India and anyone not from China is a barbarian, and red-bearded, well, because he had a red beard.

Interestingly, it is also claimed that those from the Indus Valley were also red headed.

Here's a simple declaration of delight at his student, and a suggestion of how wisdom was being presented to the whole assembly, an invitation to a deeper stance than merely a nod to moral conventions.

We are all going to be reborn as something - depending upon our thoughts, speech, actions, intent and consequences we cause directly or indirectly.

This is why we must seek to be closer to The Creator, so that we (a) are conscious of our thoughts, speech and actions and thus we limit any further damage we do to our souls.

The text calls us to be who we really are. As stated, a true person of "The Way", who has achieved wisdom, does not avoid, does not obscure, but rather is at one with the laws of cause and effect.

If we know this from our bones and marrow then grace dances into our lives and we will find ourselves transformed, and the fox and the human and the mountains and the great ocean and the vast skies, and you and I, become more intimate than even our dreams can ever say. One family. One life.

Adapted from a sermon delivered at First Unitarian Church of Providence, Rhode Island, on January 29, 2012. This story also appears in Ford's book, If You're Lucky, Your Heart Will Break: Field Notes from a Zen Life (Wisdom Publications, 2012).

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