This morning I'm going to talk about this very well-known koan from the Mumon-Kan called Yakujo's Fox. Most Zen students are familiar with this koan, at least they're familiar with the name of this koan. So I'm going to delve inside. So it's kind of a long story, and I'll read you the story. When Hyakujo lived from 720 to 814, and he was one of the most well-known Zen masters, and Huang Po was the teacher of Rinzai.

[01:02]

So, when Hyakujō Ōshō delivered a certain series of sermons, an old man always followed the monks to the main hall and listened to him. You know, in those days in China, the monks stood up for the Teishō. When the teacher would deliver his talk, all the monks remained standing. Fortunately, we're not in China anymore. You can all sit down. After the monks left the hall, this old man would stay there. Well, actually every time the monks left, the old man would leave, but one day he remained behind. And then Hyakujo asked him, who are you anyway?

[02:07]

And the old man replied, I'm not a human being. In the old days of Kashapa Buddha, I was a head monk living here on this mountain. Kashapa Buddha, you know, is one of the seven Buddhas, ancient Buddhas of the way distant past, and maybe the sixth of the seven Buddhas of the way distant past, the one actually who preceded So the old man said, I'm not a human being actually. In the old days of Kshapa Buddha, I was actually the head monk on this mountain. And one day a student asked me, does a person of enlightenment fall under the yoke of causation or not?

[03:18]

causality?" And I answered, no, she does not. Since then, I have been doomed to undergo 500 rebirths as a fox. I beg you now to give me a turning word to release me from my life as a fox. Tell me, does a person of enlightenment fall under the yoke of causation or not? And Hyakujo answered, an enlightened person does not ignore causation. No sooner had the old man heard these words than he was enlightened. Making his bows, he said, I am now emancipated from my life as a fox. I shall remain on this mountain. But I have a favor to ask of you. Would you please bury my body as that of a dead monk?"

[04:27]

In other words, give this fox body a monk's burial. Hyakujo had the director of the monks, the head monk, strike the gavel and inform everyone that after the midday meal, there would be a funeral service for a dead monk. The monks wondered at this, saying, everyone here is in pretty good health. What does this mean? So, but anyway, after the meal, Hyakujo led the monks up to the foot of a big rock on the far side of the mountain. And with his staff, he poked out the body of a dead fox and performed the ceremony of cremation. That evening, he ascended his seat and he told the monks the whole story. Obaku, who was his student, thereupon asked Hyakujo, the old man gave the wrong answer and was doomed to be a fox for 500 rebirths.

[05:33]

Now supposing he had given the right answer, what would have happened then? Hyakujo said, come up here and I'll tell you. Obaku went up to Hyakujo and boxed his ears. 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 a red bearded barbarian. So then Muman, the compiler of this record, had his comment and he said, 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 that old Hyakujo would have enjoyed 500 rebirths as a fox.

[06:34]

If you understand this koan you'll have some way to understand all of the koans. Then Bhuman has a verse about this comment. He says, not falling, not ignoring, two faces of one die. Not ignoring, not falling, a thousand Let's go on. So, to get at the heart of this, of course, it's a kind of made-up story, you know, but

[07:42]

there's a lot of meaning in all these events. So you know a fox is like a very clever, somebody's very clever, we call them a fox. In Japan foxes are revered Inari shrines, and there's a whole subculture of fox appreciation. I won't say worship, but fox appreciation, and foxes have some kind of spiritual that people appreciate.

[08:51]

But fox is like the causal side. Fox is like the conditioned side of our nature. And the monk is like the empty side of our nature. So this monk became a fox because he gave the wrong answer, and he was doomed to 500 lifetimes as a fox. So a monk is giving up the conditioned side of life. So not entangled in conditions, this is the monk's life, free from the conditioned world, that's called giving up the world, right?

[10:01]

So the monk is gives up the conditioned world and lives in the unconditioned realm. So his question is, when the person asked him this question, is an enlightened person subject to the realm of conditions, does he fall under the yoke of causation or not? Then the monk said no. So this is a big mistake because he's cutting his life in half and he's saying I live in this half but I don't live in this half.

[11:03]

So this is what this about emptiness and form, actually about karma. So karma, you know, as we know, strictly speaking means a volitional act and which means the fruit or the result of a conditioned act, I mean of a committed act, an act that you're committed to. So karma and its result is the conditioned And when your volitional act meets conditions in the world, those conditions plus your volitional act create the result.

[12:25]

And the result can be immediate or it can be down the line or it can be way down the line. And if we want to see, we say, well how did I get to be here? How did I get to the place where all these things are happening to me and my life is going this way? Well if we look back we can see that because we did this in the past, this is happening now. So our life is self-creating. volitional acts in the past plus conditions have created the results in the present. So this is called the law of dependent origination. Everything, all of our present life is the result of what we have lived in the

[13:30]

and our future life will be the result of what we're living now. So if you want to know what's in the future for you, just look at what you're doing now. So that's why we are very careful about how we live our life. We're very careful with things, very careful of how we step forward into our life. If we're too careful, we can't really live, right? And if we're too hasty we make big mistakes. So how to live in that balance of respect for karma. Actually, Bodhidharma says we must have great respect for karma because what we do either in the present or in the future.

[14:34]

So this is called the realm of causation. We cause something to happen. Our volition meets conditions and that's the realm of causation. So is the monk who is whose life is dedicated to not creating karma, evil karma, still subject to the law of conditions, dependent So the monk is making a differentiation between causation and freedom which is called emptiness.

[15:45]

isolated we are from the world of conditions, we're always in the world of conditions. You cannot escape from the world of conditions. So the monk, his mistake is to escape into the world of emptiness. And his retribution was to but that may not be so bad. Come on, it's deeper than that. So as soon as he understood he said, well I'm now emancipated. I wish that we all were upon hearing that phrase. do this funeral for the monk.

[17:03]

That's very nice, and he buried his fox life. So, the big mistake also that the monk made was to separate enlightened from The life of the fox is the deluded life, worldly life. The life of the enlightened person is the life divided from the worldly life. But that's a mistake. The monk's mistake was to divide enlightenment from delusion. So, being a fox, that's a very clever thing to do, that makes you a fox, immediately, just to make that division between enlightened and deluded.

[18:14]

So, Yakuza says he does not ignore causation, meaning he goes along with the law of causation. to go along with the law of causation in an enlightened way. In other words, he is one with the law of causation. If you want to escape, the only way to escape is to dive in. If you want to escape from your painful life, you have to be one with your painful life. As soon as you start to retreat from it or try to escape from it, it becomes a life of suffering.

[19:21]

This is the difference between the life of delusion and the life of enlightenment. make an effort to escape. The only way to escape is to be one with it. So I'll come back to this. Bunwan's comment says, not falling under causation, how could this make the monk a fox?

[20:30]

Not ignoring causation, how could this make the old man emancipated? If you come to understand this, you will realize how old Hyakujo So this is a little bit like Hamlet's to be or not to be. To be or not to be. To be is to be the fox, not to be is to be the monk. I can't remember Malcolm, how did he say this? You want me to quote it? Yeah, quote the quote. To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against the sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them.

[21:43]

Right, so one is the emptiness, the other is the form. from the Buddhist point of view. If you fall into one or the other, this is Hamlet's koan, if you fall into one side or the other, you fall into suffering. The active side contains the passive side. The passive side contains the active side. This is what we learn in Zazen. Zazen, sitting still, not doing anything, is total dynamic activity. This is called the Samadhi of the unconditioned. And then stillness within our active life

[22:46]

So within each side, the other side is included. So we have the dilemma of one side or the other. This is called a dualistic understanding. It's either this way or that way. From the sociological point of view, make the world a better place. From the, I don't know what to call this, but the other side is just pure existence. So, Mumon in his verse says, not falling, not ignoring, two faces of one die.

[23:57]

The one die is it, Buddha nature, reality. Not falling, not ignoring, two faces of one die. This is the synthesis of this koan. And then he says, not ignoring, not falling. He pretends it's the other way around. Not falling, not ignoring, not falling. A thousand errors, a million mistakes. If you know how to stay in the middle, it doesn't matter what you do, as long as you are acting within the law of karma.

[25:07]

As long as you're acting within the law of karma, you have great freedom to do whatever you want. So, you know, our practice is to practice within the limitation, always within a limitation. This is called freedom. Learning how to find your freedom within the limitation of the law of karma. So, the side of the monk is freedom. The side of the fox is limitation. So, the monk has to live with the life of the fox. And the life of the fox is the life of great freedom.

[26:13]

As soon as you cut it in half, you fall into duality. This is how we practice Azan. As soon as you hesitate, as soon as you fall into one side or the other, then you have a problem. So to grasp the two sides, the two aspects of this oneness is called realization. And it's also called emancipation from birth and death. As long as we obey the law of karma, as long as we know how our actions produce results and live our life within that restriction, we have total freedom.

[27:54]

So, birth and death are appearing on each moment. Explaining the law of karma is a little too complex right now, but our actions imprint the next birth. This is a way of speaking about karma. actions imprint on this moment, imprint the next moment, and then that moment arises as a new birth, which looks exactly like or very close to this moment. And this happens moment after moment, forever. So to have great freedom means to have freedom from a false idea of a self.

[29:11]

That's true freedom. And to create problems through our actions brings up a self. So what is being created and being born is a self. Of course we love our self, but it doesn't exist. even though we love ourselves, it really is not true. So we have to realize this. So our self is being reborn through our self-centered actions. When the self is no longer dominating, then we can easily see that it's simply Buddha nature itself, emptiness being expressed as this form, these feelings, these perceptions, these ideas and thoughts, and this consciousness.

[30:27]

This is called freedom from causation, within causation. So there's no need to climb out of causation. All we need is to stop creating a false self, a false sense of self. which is very hard to do because there's so much support for building itself that it seems unrealistic. So having no particular form is called freedom from causation.

[31:41]

We don't have any particular form. There is this form at this moment but it's continuously changing. And when we realize this and go and allow this to happen, this is called freedom from causation within causation. And having momentary form, this momentary form, is also being subject to causation. So the two are the same. They're just two sides of the same thing. Having and not having. Being and not being. Two sides of the same thing. And they interpenetrate. And if you say one, it's the same as saying the other. There's no fixed form to anything.

[32:51]

Nothing has a fixed form. There's simply a flow of dharmas and conditions. Endless flow of dharmas and conditions. that karma keeps imprinting itself on the next birth, moment by moment, forever, until the causes are no longer there. So we keep creating the causes I don't know whether that's good or bad, but it's what happens. This imprinting is an interesting notion because there is a program, you know, the latest thing in science is capturing light.

[34:01]

Capture a piece of light. in a bottle and the molecules in the bottle capture the light and won't let it go. And then from some signal they do let it go. It can be controlled. And then, well, how does the light go again once it's let go of? Well, it imprints itself. Very fascinating. It imprints itself. How does it know what direction to go in? Well, it has memory. So much reminds me of this understanding of imprinting of karma and memory and destination. There's no fate in it. It's all causes and conditions creating an endless cycle.

[35:08]

So when we say we're reborn, it doesn't mean reincarnated. Nothing is reincarnated, nothing exists the way it did, but the karmic energy imprints itself based on the preceding forms. Actually, not so hard to understand. I mean, it's impossible to understand, but on the other hand, it's not so hard to understand. Anyway, not falling, not ignoring. Two faces of one die. not ignoring, not falling, a thousand errors, a million mistakes. So how to accept each moment and be one with each moment, moment by moment.

[36:19]

That's how we live our life thoroughly, not falling and not escaping, not ignoring. So, to be or not to be, we could say controlled or not controlled. That is the question. Very close to Hamlet. We're having Sasheen today and I don't want to go beyond our scheduled time, but if we have one question. Yeah.

[37:24]

The one thing that puzzles me is the response that the question about whether enlightened person has causation. And that being the cause of this monk becoming a fox, wouldn't the karma of the belief that that was happening have caused him to be a fox even without the question being asked? Well you could make a case for that. Why would that be meaningful? because what I'm curious about is whether it's the action that caused him. Yeah, it was the action that caused him. Or was it the thought, belief? It was the action. But it's interesting because in the end, it's fine to be a fox for 500 lifetimes, as long as you're a real fox.

[38:33]

Totally a fox for 500 lifetimes means that whatever situation you find yourself in, that's your situation. That's what that means. If you start taking it literally, you have a problem, another problem. So to be a fox for 500 lifetimes simply means that's the causation side. And as long as you don't separate the causation side from the other side, we say hell is just another place to practice. So we always, if you have right practice, you're always saved even in the midst of hell. So, according to your question, the monk was already a fox, but he didn't realize his foxness until he asked the question.

[40:00]

Is that what you're saying? Somewhat, but would that then cause him to become a total fox the way that I guess the question is, is the thought, the belief system that he was carrying, would that have carried him into being a fox? In the same way that the deed of answering the question did. So I say he's already a fox. Potentially already a fox. Yeah. Does that answer your question? You can't be a fox unless you're already a fox. He actually had a problem in that he didn't really realize he was a fox.

[41:02]

That's right. Yeah, he didn't realize. Giving the wrong answer gave him a chance to understand that he was a fox.

[41:10]

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