Was Phil as confused as he pretended to be? Or was he just being a wily old fox?
Mumonkan Case 2
Hyakujô and the Fox
Whenever master Hyakujô delivered a sermon, an old man was always there listening with the monks. When they left, he left too. One day, however, he remained behind.
The master asked him, “What man are you, standing in front of me?”
The man replied, “Indeed, I am not a man. In the past, in the time of Kashyapa Buddha, I lived on this mountain as a priest. On one occasion a monk asked me, 'Does a perfectly enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect or not?' I answered, 'He does not.' Because of this answer (For this answer evidencing a clinging to absoluteness), I fell into the state of a fox for 500 lives. Now, I beg you, Master, please say a turning word on my behalf and release me from the body of a fox.”
Then he asked, “Does a perfectly enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect or not?”
The master answered, “The law of cause and effect cannot be obscured.” Upon hearing this, the old man immediately became deeply enlightened
It was Saturday morning. Only a few minutes remained until the last period of meditation ended. Phil was set to descend the stairs to the zendo and begin the ritual of opening the dharma. He was legally blind. It all required a lot of effort and planning. He was going to give a talk on this koan, Hyakujô and the Fox.
I was being his jisha and carried the incense. We paused at the top of the stairs. He suddenly decided he needed to check the exact wording of the old man’s question. Phil, another old man, could not make a mistake. He asked out loud, “Does a man of enlightenment fall under the yoke of causation or not? What was his answer, yea or nay? What did it say exactly? Is the man free from Cause and Effect, or is he still trapped?”
He asked me, “Check it out in the Mumonkan, will you?” But the tone of his voice sounded more like a command. He appeared agitated. He seemed to expect that I should have had some ability to find a particular case. “It’s very famous, he said. “It's in the Mumonkan. It must be somewhere on the shelf in the living room. It’s a very important case.”
I have described his ability to find the page, the paragraph and the sentence of an author he loved in his meticulously arranged library, but that morning, standing in the living room at Hartford Street, the books on the shelves were a total disorganized mess.
With the koans, or at least in this particular moment, my ability completely disappeared. When I eventually located the Mumonkan, he said he could not remember the case number, and he seemed to be blaming me for not supplying the missing information. Eventually, making us only a few minutes late, I read, 'Does a perfectly enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect or not?' I answered, 'He does not.'
Phil said, “Good. His first answer is no. Thank you.” Now, he was prepared to open the dharma. I remember nothing about his talk. Questions tumbled over and over in my mind--not just is the enlightened man free from the law and cause and effect, but what exactly are we trying to free ourselves from anyway? What part of my life did I need to unyoke to be happy
A few years later, I sat with this koan for days in the damp woods of Camp Meeker. When the sun came up till the day darkened, I thought of Phil, his blindness, and his generosity. The wily old fox had given me a koan filled with indecision, red herrings, witchcraft, and a few wrong answers, probably just traps or misdirections laid out with skill. He told me that he thought he remembered it correctly, but he wanted to double-check it. What was this puzzle that he had to get right?
Philip was a man whose life, almost all of his waking life not occupied with meditation, was devoted to language and the written word. I can attest that words were his lovers, and he returned the favor. Now, he couldn’t read at all anymore. He was almost completely blind, and the reason was simply misdiagnosed glaucoma, which would have been easily treatable. What a tragedy. If only a doctor had been able to give him the correct word for his blindness and not assigned some rare disease that only one a thousand get. Or if he had only gotten a second opinion when the highly recommended quack told him to kiss his sight goodbye. Maybe not 500 lives as a fox, but close.
Sometimes, the law of cause and effect seems filled with random errors. Perhaps the law is quirky and poorly administered. The koan says, “The law of cause and effect cannot be obscured.”
The Zen master says he’s happy to have saved us all!
Phil’s verse:
HYMNUS AD PATREM SINENSIS
by Philip Whalen
I praise
those ancient Chinamen
Who left me a few words,
Usually a pointless joke or a silly question
A line of poetry drunkenly scrawled on the margin of a quick
splashed picture—bug, leaf,
caricature of Teacher
on paper held together now by little more than ink
& their own strength brushed momentarily over it
Their world & several others since
Gone to hell in a handbasket, they knew it—
Cheered as it whizzed by—
& conked out among the busted spring rain cherryblossom winejars
Happy to have saved us all.
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