I gave this talk at our Full Moon Zen sesshin on April 26, 2024. A recording follows.

This is Case 2 in The Gateless Gate, with it We-men’s verse and comment:

Once when Pai-chang gave a series of talks, a certain old man was always there listening
together with the monks. When they left, he would leave too. One day, however, he remained
behind. Pai-chang asked him, “Who are you, standing here before me?”

The old man replied, “I am not a human being. In the far distant past, in the time of
Kāśyapa Buddha, I was head priest at this mountain. One day a monk asked me, ‘Does an
enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect or not?’ I replied, ‘Such a person does
not fall under the law of cause and effect.’ With this I was reborn five hundred times as a fox.
Please say a turning word for me and release me from the body of a fox.”

He then asked Pai-chang, “Does an enlightened person fall under the law of cause and
effect or not?”

Pai-chang said, “Such a person does not evade the law of cause and effect.”
Hearing this, the old man immediately was enlightened. Making his bows he said, “I am
released from the body of a fox. The body is on the other side of this mountain. I wish to make a
request of you. Please, Abbot, perform my funeral as for a priest.”

Pai-chang had a head monk strike the signal board and inform the assembly that after the
noon meal there would be a funeral service for a priest. The monks talked about this in wonder.
“All of us are well. There is no one in the morgue. What does the teacher mean?”After the meal, Pai-chang led the monks to the foot of a rock on the far side of the mountain.

And there, with his staff, he poked out the body of a dead fox. He then performed the ceremony
of cremation. That evening he took the high seat before his assembly and told the monks the
whole story.

Huang-po stepped forward and said, “As you say, the old man missed the turning word and
was reborn as a fox five hundred times. What if he had given the right answer each time he was
asked a question—what would have happened then?”

Pai-chang said, “Just step up here closer, and I’ll tell you.” Huang-po went up to Pai-chang
and slapped him in the face.

Pai-chang clapped his hands and laughed, saying, “I thought the Barbarian had a red
beard, but here is a red-bearded Barbarian.”

WU-MEN’S COMMENT
“Not falling under the law of cause and effect.” Why should this prompt five hundred lives as a
fox? “Not evading the law of cause and effect.” Why should this prompt a return to human life?
If you have the single eye of realization, you will appreciate how old Pai-chang lived five
hundred lives as a fox as lives of grace.

WU-MEN’S VERSE
Not falling, not evading—
two faces of the same die.
Not evading, not falling—
a thousand mistakes, ten thousand mistakes.

Old.  Young.

Teacher.  Monk.

Human.  Animal.

Enlightened. Unenlightened.

Subject to the law of cause and effect.  Not subject to the law of cause and effect.

Trapped.  Released.

Alive.  Dead.

High.  Low.

Right,  Wrong.

These are some of the dualisms on display in this cherished and curious koan.  It presents a seeming thicket of dualisms.

There are other dualisms lurking in the thicket, connecting all the others: 

Searching.  Finding.

One.  Two.

This is the second koan in the first koan collection most Zen practitioners encounter.  It follows Mu.  There’s a logic to that.  It’s ordinary to feel trapped by dualisms.  To get lost in them.  This koan meets many of us right where we’re at when we encounter it.

It’s also ordinary eventually to begin to doubt and contest dualisms.  And to discover through our doubt and questioning that they’re not as solid and confining as we believed they were.  

And yet, it’s also ordinary eventually to begin to doubt and contest the boundaryless-ness, the radical Oneness, the absoluteness of the Absolute that we might experience if we reach a point in our spiritual journey where we feel splendidly awash in bliss and insight.  If we think abiding in Oneness is a separate place or state to which we can escape.

When the old man in our koan was high priest at this monastery, another monk asked him what it’s like to be enlightened.  “Does an enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect or not?”  “No,” responded the priest from his highness.  

The head priest’s response betrays more than a touch of spiritual pride.  And it tells us the peak he thinks he’s reached isn’t the real peak.  The peakless peak.

Viewed from the peakless peak, we discover that many of our dualisms cannot be dissolved completely.  And that they don’t need to be.  That we’re not trapped by them.  We can liberate them and find our liberty within them.  

It’s ordinary to get lost in dualisms.  

It’s ordinary to feel constrained by them.  

It’s ordinary to contest them and discover some are permeable to some degree.  

And yet, it’s ordinary eventually to reapproach and reclaim them, differently now, in transformed relationship to them.  

This seems to be the arc of our spiritual journey.

Here’s a personal example: The God-No God, Theist-Atheist dualism.

As I transitioned from the theistic perspective of my Roman Catholic youth and early adulthood to what I now consider a nontheistic perspective, there was a long period during which I reacted very negatively to God talk.  I had a visceral, negative reaction to it, as if fingernails were moving slowly down some cosmic blackboard.

Something has shifted since then.  God talk isn’t the religious idiom that feels most resonant to me, but I don’t feel a need to stand in opposition to it as I did for a time years ago.  Some of it resonates for me today, or at least provokes and inspires me.

I love the 12^th century German mystic Meister Eckhart, for example.  He said things like, “Woulds’t thou be holy?  Do not yelp about God,” and “Pray God that we may lose God for the sake of finding God.”  Whatever God is to a given theist, I sure hope God isn’t an idea.

In both Chinese and Japanese mythology, the fox is often seen as a mischevious and wise and shapeshifting character.  A bit like us as we grow and change.  As we revolve and evolve.

Pai-chang’s turning words released the old man from the body of the fox, which was found dead outside the monastery and received a proper burial.  

Trapped.  Released.

Alive.  Dead.

As Wu-men’s comment tells us, the old man who asked Pai-chang for some turning words, and so also the former high priest, were none other than Pai-chang himself (and you and me, of course).

Fact.  Fiction.

“If you have the single eye of realization,” Wu-men says, “you will appreciate how old Pai-chang lived five hundred lives as a fox as lives of grace.”

The “release” we experience on the Zen path is not the release into formlessness a younger Pai-chang imagined.  A cosmic “get out of jail free” card.  It’s a transformation; literally, a new relationship to form, not detachment from it.

Perhaps we step on the path as a human who sees humans as more worthy than foxes—and so-called enlightened humans as more worthy than so-called unenlightened humans.  If and as we continue to walk this path and let it to transform us, we’re likely to become a human who knows humans aren’t more worthy than foxes—because we are that fox.  We will know this even as we strike a fox with a stick to stop it from sinking its rabid teeth into a child’s forearm—or maybe even kill it to protect that child.

We’ll become an enlightened person who knows enlightenment is nothing personal.  That sages and fools are equally enlightened.

I love how this koan ends.  Being lost in the thicket of dualisms can feel so heavy.  Many koans have a slapstick quality, and this one pivots in that direction as it ends.  Huang-po’s slap, and Pai-chang’s laugh, sum up this teaching nicely.

May each of us live our five hundred lives as lives of grace.  Live them, and hold life, with a loving, light touch.