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HYAKUJO'S FOX |
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Today’s teisho will be on Case Two in the Mumonkan, “Hyakujo’s Fox.” CASE When Hyakujo Osho delivered a certain series of sermons, an old man always followed the monks to the main hall and listened to him. When the monks left the hall, the old man would also leave. One day, however, he remained behind, and Hyakujo asked him, “Who are you, standing here before me?” The old man replied, “I am not a human being. In the old days of Kashyapa Buddha, I was a head monk, living here on this mountain. One day a student asked me, ‘Does a man of enlightenment fall under the yoke of causation or not?’ I answered, ‘No, he does not.’ Since then I have been doomed to undergo five hundred rebirths as a fox. I beg you now to give the turning word to release me from my life as a fox. Tell me, does a man of enlightenment fall under the yoke of causation or not?” Hyakujo answered, “He does not ignore causation.” No sooner had the old man heard these words than he was enlightened. Making his bows, he said, “I am emancipated from my life as a fox. I shall remain on this mountain. I have a favor to ask of you: would you please bury my body as that of a dead monk.” Hyakujo had the director of the monks strike with the gavel and inform everyone that after midday meal there would be a funeral service for a dead monk. The monks wondered at this, saying, “Everyone is in good health; nobody is in the sick ward. What does this mean?” After the meal Hyakujo led the monks to the foot of a rock on the far side of the mountain and with his staff poked out the dead body of a fox and performed the ceremony of cremation. That evening he ascended the rostrum and told the monks the whole story. Obaku thereupon asked him, “The old man gave the wrong answer and was doomed to be a fox for five hundered rebirths. Now, suppose he had given the right answer, what would have happened then?” Hyakujo said, “Oh, you come here to me and I will tell you.” Obaku went up to Hyakujo and boxed his hears. Hyakujo clapped his hands with a laugh and exclaimed, “I was thinking that the barbarian had a red beard, but now I see before me the red-bearded barbarian himself.” MUMON’S COMMENT Not falling under causation: how could this make the monk a fox? Not ignoring causation: how could this make the old man emancipated? If you come to understand this, you will realize how old Hyakujo would have enjoyed five hundred rebirths as a fox. MUMON’S VERSE Not falling, not ignoring: Three bells This is the third day of our winter sesshin, and a beautiful
day, right? The snow still looks fresh and pristine, the sky
is cold blue, the sub-freezing weather quite lovely, really--
classical winter weather. And we’re all here together
in the zendo, warm and safe, doing zazen early in the morning.
Wonderful, deep sitting this morning. Everyone has been practicing
wholeheartedly, coming into the dokusan room and really showing
their guts, as we say in Zen. Wonderful! At this time all over China there were public temples, just like public schools now. And anybody who wanted to wake up, anybody who wanted to be liberated from birth and death, could go to a temple and practice--monks, nuns and lay people. You could spend your life going from temple to temple. Of course you had to have a letter which you carried in a backpack that contained your personal items. The letter, with an imperial seal, indicated that you were lawfully ordained. You could go to any temple in China and be admitted, given a room and food and work responsibilities. You would be expected to show up for sitting and sesshin and so on. So Joshu hit the road and he went all over China, visiting numerous great teachers. Many of his adventures are recorded in various stories in the Mumonkan and in the Hekiganroku as well. When Joshu was quite old, a hundred or so-- he was supposed to have lived to be a hundred and twenty--he devised the Mu koan. The Mu koan was a great innovation and it revolutionized Zen practice. It’s interesting that Joshu’s line, his lineage, disappeared very quickly. He had a few able students, but these students just didn’t manage to find other students who were capable and so Joshu’s lineage disappeared. But his teachings hugely influenced Zen in China. Mumon included the Mu koan in the Mumonkan and he made it the first one because mu-shin, the mind of shunyata, is the foundation of everything we do. But the second one is the fox koan. That’s interesting, right? It’s rather obvious why Mumon put the Mu koan first in collection, but why is the fox koan second? If you’re engaged in Mu practice, one day, while you’re calling Mu, you are going to discover that there is a condition of existence in which everything disappears. You can be sitting on your cushion day after day, silently calling, “Mu, mu, mu” while asking yourself, “What is this all about?” Your legs might be hurting, your back might be tired, but sooner or later, you will notice that your mind becomes totally blank, totally empty. It will be like staring into dark cave. Most people in the world --and there’s about seven billion of them--never notice this their whole lives. But in Buddhism this darkness is tremendously significant: in our moment-by-moment awareness there are places where there’s absolutely nothing. And if you go to those places infrequently, only once in a while, you might think, “Oh, there’s nothing of interest here.” If you stay there for a while longer you might think, “This is boring.” Or you might even feel lonely and isolated, like you’re locked in a dark room all by yourself, which is not a pleasant sensation. But if you stay in Mu long enough, something is going to change. You’re really going to feel quite wonderful. There’s a kind of energy that comes from that emptiness which is, in Buddhism, very important. I, myself, know almost nothing about physics. I barely got through the high school course. And yet I do know that physicists are very interested in the fact that the universe appears to oscillate between something and nothing. Apparently some physicists think that the universe is pulsing and that nothing lies inside of something, and something arises out of nothing at all. And that coincides quite dramatically with some of the basic teachings of Buddhism. We don’t use calculations, of course; we just sit on the cushion. But eventually, if you stay in that darkness, that blankness, long enough, you will feel this wonderful purifying energy. Sometimes you might feel bored or lifeless. But if you really go back to that blankness and you stay there long enough, you really will feel better. You will feel tremendously energized. That life energy is quite important. You can’t make yourself feel it--it will arrive of its own accord if you just stay with the emptiness. Please understand that part of the work required by the Mu koan is simply sitting in that blankness for a long time when nothing seems to be happening. It can be frustrating because you’re waiting for the payoff: you’re just knocking at a door that never opens, that may never open, or so it seems. But eventually the door will open and this wonderful energy will come out. Now, even if you’ve been doing the Mu koan for ten years, you can have a deep experience of Mu all over again. After finishing my training with Webb Roshi, I came to New Jersey because I had just landed a new job at Rutgers. And after a number of years of practicing by myself I went up to the Catskills for practice with Eido Roshi. When I arrived at Daibosatsu Zendo I did not tell him anything about my background. I just sat down in the zendo as a regular participant, with some off-the-shelf robes for lay visitors. When I went in to see him in dokusan, I said, “Yes, I was a student of Genki Roshi and Webb Roshi with whom I finished my training.” And he said, “What does that mean--'finished your training?’” After I explained he said, “Ok, well, why don’t you do the Mu koan.” And I thought, “Wait a minute. I’ve already done the Mu koan--many years ago.” But I did the Mu koan again and it was an astonishing experience. It was fresh and liberating all over again, and I had an altogether new experience of Mu, really quite deep and unlike the previous experience. We sometimes think, “I’ve been there, done that.” And sometimes it is indeed possible to do shallow Mu practice. But if you’re really in that emptiness, it’s hugely purifying. For as long as we practice--as long as we remain alive, and, indeed, even longer--Mu is the foundation. In fact, the Heart Sutra teaches that there’s no obstacle that Mu cannot dissolve if you go deeply enough into it. Of course people discover this power while they’re doing the Mu koan, which can take years to complete. The last part of the Mu koan, by the way, is acting from that emptiness. That’s why people come into the dokusan room and call Mu aloud. Sometimes when you call Mu, it’s very feeble and forced. But sometimes, when people have purified body, mind and heart after many days on the cushion and when they come into dokusan to call Mu, it’s really wonderful to hear. It’s as though they are an empty vessel and the universe is pouring through them. This morning Illusha did the sutras and I really think his delivery was excellent. It was really coming out of his hara and out of Mu. There was great, natural energy and I didn’t think it sounded artificial at all. The Mu koan is the foundation but after that we encounter the fox koan. And the fox koan is quite important its own right because after a person has “answered” the Mu koan--has deeply opened up to the energy of emptiness--he or she might begin to think, “I am getting to be an enlightened person.” By the way, there’s nothing wrong with thinking that you’re making progress in Zen. You’re not really being selfish or something like that. You can say, “I’ve been practicing for ten years. I’ve answered a lot of koans. I feel better about my life.” That’s ok. But sometimes, after we’ve practiced Zen for a long time--perhaps we’ve even had Dai Kensho, a great awakening experience-- we might think, “My god, I’m totally clear, totally free from obstructions.” But the reality is more complex than this because even after Dai Kensho, people still have karma, their personal makeup, their personal foibles and fears. And you might not see the traces of this karma very often if you get up in the morning and you sit, and then you go to work, day after day, peacefully and placidly. You might encounter your fox only very rarely. But then something might happen. Let’s say that you have a job that you’re pretty happy with. And maybe your romantic relationship is going well and everything is clicking. Then all of a sudden something happens. You go to work one day and your boss says, “I’d need to see you in my office. Do you mind?” “What could this be?” you think. The boss says, “We’re closing your division down.” “Oh, my god!!‘ you think to yourself, “You’re closing my division down.” This actually happened to a friend of mine, who practices Zen with another teacher. “We’re offshoring your division”--that’s what the boss said. And my friend was overcome with anxiety: “I’m fifty seven years old and my job is gone. Now what?” To his surprise he felt that he was going to unravel. Sometimes you can be more shocked by your reaction to the news than by the news itself. You just fall apart, in spite of all your Zen training. That’s what happened to my friend. Here’s another scenario. Maybe your relationship hasn’t been as good as you supposed. You’ve been saying to yourself, “ I have a good relationship--solid.” But then, one day your partner comes in and says, “I’ve fallen in love with somebody else.” You’re incredulous: “What? We’ve been together for fifteen years, and I thought we were happy.” On an occasion like this you can sometimes see your fox. I met a man about a year ago who told me that he had been married for thirty years. He was a litigator--a courtroom gladiator--and he definitely had an edge. His profession had made him into a slightly unnerving person. He had a sarcastic sense of humor, not entirely well-meaning. But he told me, and I could see he was in a lot of pain, “My wife came home after thirty years and said, ‘I’m leaving you. I’m going to go look for love,’” and she left him. He had remarried to the woman who was seated beside him, and I could already see a lot of strain and tension between the two of them. I don’t think that he expected his marriage to fall apart. It just happened one day. If you’ve been doing a lot of zazen you could think, “Well, I do zazen. I’m sure I can deal with this.” And then you go back to your empty house where you used to live with your wife and all of a sudden you might feel frightened, right? You’re frightened or you’re lonely or you’re generally hurting. And this could be quite a shock to people who practice Zen because if you’re really practicing Zen, especially if you get quite accomplished at it, you could forget about this part of yourself and you might not even think it exists anymore. But we all have a fox. I’m an admirer of a writer named Russell Banks, an American novelist and, in fact, a very nice guy. He came to Rutgers several times and lectured on creative writing. Russell Banks’ father was a plumbing contractor in New England who had a make-or-break moment when he landed a big contract for the first time. It was his shot at breaking out of his status as a small contractor. But the details got away from him and ultimately ruined his business. He couldn’t handle the scaling up, and Banks explained to me that his dad became a very unhappy man and a physically abusive father. He had a drinking problem and would fight with his wife and so on. As I recall Banks said something like this: “I’m a big, strong man and yet when things go wrong I’m a little boy again. When things go wrong I find myself back in that place where I was when I was a little kid and my father was coming up the stairs to like punish me. I’m terrified and I feel totally powerless.” Banks said, “That’s been with me all my life.” He’s written about this a couple of times. And he talked about how it made him for a while a hard person to live with. That was Russell Banks’s fox. The fox is where we go--what we become-- when things aren’t working out. Often we carry this karma from events in our early, early life, but sometimes it comes from later years. My mother had her fox as well. She grew up in truly grinding poverty. My grandfather, her father, was a dairy farmer in northern New York State during the Great Depression, and his family had a very hard life with very little money. During the Depression my grandfather lost his house and farm, and so my grandmother left Plattsburgh to work in Albany as a cook in the Governor’s Mansion. My grandfather became a hired hand, a hired agricultural worker. As for my mother, she lived with her father in a bunk house. Her job was to get up early in the morning and cook breakfast for all the hands on this farm. And then she would go off to school. My mother used to recall that all her girlfriends would enjoy visiting each other’s houses, and they would say to my mother, “Well, Joyce, when are we going to come over to your house?” But my mother didn’t have a house. She had a bunk in a bunkhouse, and she was understandably ashamed of that. Her mother was away in Albany and her older sister was working in a department store. Her brother was somewhere else, trying to finish school. Consequently, when my mother was not at her best, she would become a little girl living in a bunk house, ashamed of her circumstances. As we grow up we think we leave that person behind, but in a certain way that child--the little girl or little boy--is always there. That’s our fox. Sometimes, especially if we’ve done a lot of zazen, we can deceive ourselves. We might think, “Well, all of that is in the past.” But if you look carefully, you can sometimes see your fox peeking out. You can see it. And when it does, please don’t let it throw you. If you think that Zen practice is going to liberate you from all karma, you’re right. But in Buddhism we have a technical term for a person who is liberated from all karma. The term is “Buddha,” ok? A Buddha is somebody who is totally liberated from all karma. That person has no fox. But all other human beings have a fox. And sometimes in Zen practice you encounter your fox. There might be a moment in your Zen practice when you’re feeling down, or you’re feeling helpless or vulnerable or angry. You think, “Why am I feeling angry? Why am I sad?” You know, I’ve worked with people over the years and some have come to sesshin with a very calm demeanor. Day one of sesshin, very sweet. Day two, very sweet. Day three-- furious. Seeing that transformation, one might ask, “What happened?” That’s somebody’s fox. Don’t be afraid to see your own fox, if you catch a glimpse of it. In America we’re addicted to positive thinking. Everybody’s supposed to go around with a big smile on his face. We’re all supposed to be happy and cheerful. And actually, being happy is what Buddhism is all about. But it has to be real happiness, not a mandatory veneer. On television, everybody walks around telling jokes and laughing and having a great time unless you turn to a police drama. And as you know, salesmen always smile. Part of American culture is this mandatory happiness. But I think real true happiness, real joy, requires encountering our fox. Sometimes you don’t have to go looking. It will simply turn up. You often run into your fox when you’ve had some kind of a personal defeat or injury. You’re not likely to find your fox when you go to work and the boss says, “Brilliant! You’re doing a brilliant job. Here’s a raise.” You’re not going to find your fox when you’re talking to somebody who pays you compliments all the time. But when you get a pink slip, when you get a rejection notice, when you give the audition and they say, “Thank you. Thanks a lot,” with a big smile. “We’ll be in touch,” meaning “We won’t be in touch,” that’s when the fox makes an appearance. When that happens you might go home and you think, “Oh my god! My father is coming up the stairs to beat me.” Or you think, “I’m in the bunk house and the wind is blowing through the boards in the floor and there’s absolutely no one around. I’m all by myself.” When the fox arrives you go back to that position, that place. And people who get fall into depression get stuck in that place with their fox. It is quite possible to pretend not to see the fox at all even when he’s sitting right in front of you. But I think a lot of trouble can be caused by that sort of denial. Some of you might have heard about the recent events at Dai Bosatsu Zendo where I visited many years ago. The teacher, the roshi there, was finally removed for having sexual relations with his students over the course of many, many years. He would have sexual relations with a student and then he would get caught and he would confess and offer an apology and about half the community would leave. And then he would say, “I promise not to do it again.” You know where this is going, right? Soon he’d do it again--on and one throughout his whole career. I know him and I think that he’s a brilliant person. He’s brilliant, charming, charismatic, and as a result, people would make excuses for him. Now that he’s been stripped of his authority, many people have written in various publications to put in their two cents. And most of the writing has been moralizing and didactic. He was a bad roshi. He was supposed to be “good” but instead he was “bad.” I agree completely, but why was he "bad"? I don’t think people fully understand that this teacher had a big fox he wasn’t aware of. I think the teacher was trapped in a lonely room by himself all alone. I don’t know his personal history, but I think he was dying for affection, for human contact and other things that we all need in order to be mentally healthy. Perhaps he didn’t get that contact early in his life and maybe he just couldn’t let let people in.Perhaps--and this is just my speculation--he created an unhealthy situation for himself because he didn’t confront his fox. We’re all afraid of the fox because we think, “If I admit to having a fox, that means that all my practice has been a fraud.” I certainly think that Eido Roshi should have been removed--not recently but many, many years ago. But to make the matter a bit more complex, let me add that I'm also quite convinced that Eido Roshi had experienced Dai Kensho. So one might ask, “How could a man have had Dai Kensho and still posses a fox”--a terrible fox that damaged everyone involved? But, you see, all humans have a fox. The problem arises when we don’t recognize our fox and we instead we say, “No, no. I have no fox.” That’s the road to disaster because when we’re in the spell of our fox, we do things compulsively. If you’ve been physically abused as a child, you’ve had this experience of being powerless with nobody coming to your rescue. And when you’re in that state you’ll make all kinds of bad decisions because you’re terrified. And if you’ve been abandoned and you’ve grown up alone as my mother did, you might be willing to stay with my dad, who was a terrible husband, for years and years until he finally abandoned her. And why did she stay with him? Because she was stuck in that bunkroom in upstate New York. I wish that my mother could have seen her fox. She might have been more willing to leave my dad if she’d only seen her fear for what it really was. In spite of her obstacles, my mother did many good things with her life. She became a legal secretary. Then she became a court reporter. She passed the exam for a real estate license and sold real estate. She was an administrative assistant for many years. So my mother didn’t let her fox get the best of her. She was a very capable person but she forgot about that at times. In moments of stress she would become once again an abandoned little girl. But we all have our fox and it’s important to be aware it and also to realize that there’s more to us than our fox. We have other resources. When we sit on the cushion we can experience mushin and with it comes this deep connectedness to the world around us-- you know, deep connectedness and real energy. People walk into the dokusan room sometime and they really call Mu. When I was listening to Ilusha reciting the sutras--I don’t want to make him embarrassed-- but I thought, “Oh, that’s perfect. There’s real joyous energy in his voice.” If you’re going to do something, ideally do it with joyous energy. And it’s not always possible to do that naturally, and so our actions can become a little artificial sometimes. But sometimes the energy simply arises spontaneously. If you’re going to recite the sutras, one way to do so is halfheartedly. Some people barely manage a mumble. Others make a full-throated, whole-hearted effort. A person who used to come here frequently wanted to be noticed, and so he would never recite the sutras in sync with everybody else. He would always be a syllable behind. I’m sure you know who I’m talking about if you’ve practicing for a few years. He’s gone now but when he would recite the sutras, he would always finish a line after everybody else had all stopped. After a while it was like having blurred vision in your ears. I felt like yelling at him, “Would you knock it off!!!" But he clearly wanted to be noticed and so I decided not to make an issue of it. Probably if he had kept practicing this behavior would have fallen away. It’s a problem if you are always out of sync, but there’s nothing wrong with reciting from your heart. It’s a little embarrassing sometimes to be open and energetic but that’s the best way to do anything. Sometimes, when we’re open and energetic, it creates tensions and resentments because we might make others uncomfortable. And that’s a difficult situation. But the important thing is to be alive and not to be too daunted by our setbacks and to realize that we all have a fox. Getting to know your fox is so important because otherwise we just think it’s who we are fundamentally. When we’re on the cushion--fortunately--we sometimes realize that some of our thoughts are just bullshit. We’re caught up in this or that concern, growing more worried or more tense, and then suddenly we just realize, “That’s bullshit,” and we go back to Mu or back to the breath. But sometimes our thoughts are very compelling because they’re closely related to our fox. And those are thoughts like these: “I’m helpless. There’s nothing I can do, I’m trapped,” or “I’m worthless,” or “I’m an idiot.” Generally those ideas or feelings are very close to our fox. And so when you find yourself getting into the familiar cycles, it’s important to realize, “Ah, this is my fox.” Please remind yourself, “There’s more to me than my fox. I’ve encountered vast emptiness. I’ve encountered boundless compassion. I’ve encountered unquenchable energy.” I’m sure you’ve discovered that energy if you come to sesshin before. For those of you who are here for the first time, let me recommend that you get plenty of sleep. But at some point you’re not going to be able to sleep anymore because you will have so much energy. I, myself, have been a bit sick at this sesshin, and yet I can’t sleep. The first night I went into my bedroom after dinner at 7 o’clock and I thought, “Ok, I’m sick. Let me gt some extra rest.” But instead of sleeping I just lay there. This happens to me quite often at sesshin. I don’t think it’s nervous energy or some neurotic agitation. Instead it feels perfectly natural and smooth. Use that energy to deal with your fox. If you get trapped in a box with your fox, you can get depressed. And then you might think, “There’s no way out of this. I’m trapped.” But this feeling of being totally blocked you should learn to recognize as the hallmark of delusional thinking. There’s always something you can do. When things aren’t going well, for example, it’s important to reach out to other people, to your friends. Human contacts are important. It’s important to do zazen--of course-- and also to explore new avenues.If you’ve been stuck for a long time in a job that you don’t like, there’s usually some alternative job that you would like more. The best way to deal with your fox is to try to stop repeating all the old behavior. You really can’t get out of the mental loops unless you actually do things differently. Tell me, does a man of enlightenment fall under the yoke of causation or not?” Hyakujo answered, “He does not ignore causation.” No sooner had the old man heard these words than he was enlightened. The fox koan is all about the psychological problem of repetition: even though the results are always the same and always unsatisfactory, we keep doing the same thing, again and again. How do we get out of the mental trap which we create for ourselves? There is a wonderful song by Cole Porter and it’s entitled “Experiment”: Before you leave these portals At that time, for a gay male to come out of the closet was very difficult and risky, and in fact Porter never came out entirely. Instead he married a woman who was not interested in him as a sexual partner but just as someone with whom she could share a life, and they conspired together to maintain the fiction of a heterosexual marriage. But it was well known among their friends that Porter was gay. Porter eventually became a tremendously creative, lively person. And I think this happened precisely he was willing to experiment. He could have said, “Oh dear, my parents want me to be a lawyer. There’s nothing I can do. I’ve got to be a lawyer.” He could have said, “Well, my parents want me to be a Baptist. I have to be a Baptist. There’s no way out.” And he could have said, “Gee, I really like men but there’s no way out.” But he didn’t do those things. He experimented and I think he saw the light. So it’s important to be true to your true nature and not to be intimidated by your fox. And we all get knocked down occasionally and then this little fox scampers over. And he says, “You’re no good. You’re trapped. You can’t get out.” But please remember what Cole Porter says: “Experiment. Make that your motto day and night. Experiment. And it will lead you to the light.” That should be added to the Mumonkan. Not falling under causation. How could this make a monk a fox? Not ignoring causation. How could this make the old man emancipated? If you come to understand this, you will realize how old Hyakujo could have enjoyed five hundred rebirths as a fox. Not falling, not ignoring: The fox always comes to us and says, “You’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake.” But there’s no other way to live except to make mistakes. If you run into a fox, don’t feel demoralized, OK? It's quite important to encounter your fox, and if you pretend not to have one, you are deceiving yourself. The only way to deal with your fox is to enter into deep samadhi and let go--trusting yourself to that boundless emptiness, that deep connectedness and energy. And then you have to try something new. Three bells. 4.10.11
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