About a Fox

A retelling of case 2 – Pai Chang’s Fox

Photo by Laura Chisholm Smith, Haliburton

This fox was very, very old. He had lived for five hundred lives. It wasn’t easy being a fox. People thought he was a mischievous trickster and a bad omen. He lost many lives as they tried to get rid of him. He lost many lives because his fur was precious. Especially his tail. When he got too close to people they kicked him away and tried to harm him. But most of the time he spent doing what foxes do. Looking for food, sleeping, frolicking, sniffing out other foxes to mate with or avoid, and always being alert for danger.

Every once in a while he’d have this really pleasant sensation. It might happen when he was waiting patiently to pounce on the mole that was tunnelling beneath him and about to emerge. It would seem like everything was suspended except for him and the mole. He could hear its heartbeat and his own, he could isolate the smell it out of a myriad of scents, and something like a keen energy that life makes would tingle through his form. It happened once when he was sunning himself and it started to rain. His senses were attuned to every little thing. Like the soft thud and dusty splash the raindrops made on the dry ground. The smell rain makes when it hits hot earth. The cool drops of rain on his nose and the rest of his face. Another time, it happened on a clear night when the moon was half full and he didn’t feel the urge to do anything at all. He felt awake and alert. It was very, very quiet and dark. A river of small lights swept across the middle of the big night sky. From their midst, the moon bathed the fox and the tips of things with light.

The fox was lucky in this life because he lived near a monastery. He found plenty of mice and rats to eat that the nuns didn’t want in the monastery anyway. The nuns were very nice to him. He would still roam in the woods for wild food, to keep a small territory, and to find other foxes. Often though, he would sun himself on one of the monastery terraces that was smooth and warm. He felt so safe and content there. He could sleep a deep sleep. They would give him food, but he never completely lost his sense of caution and wouldn’t become their pet. The nuns seemed to respect his wildness. Often too, he was drawn to spend time at the monastery because that pleasant life energy sensation would happened there. It was nicer even than food. He didn’t understand the sounds they made. They chanted and sang, recited mantras with long necklaces of beads, and sometimes they sat very, very still, apparently not moving a single muscle for hours. It would be fine to sit beside them at these times, even lie down and nap. Their energy was peaceful. The way they quietly looked at him, too, that was nice.

Some days, the nuns were gathered around an older nun who was talking. The fox was often curled up and warm on one of the terraces. On this day something sounded familiar and tantalizing. He stood up, turned around, and sat facing them. He had a very slight head tilt as he listened to the old nun and the tip of his tail tapped the floor lightly. She talked for a long time. It felt like a river of something that was familiar to him. Now and then a sound she made repeatedly formed in the fox’s mind as a word. This was unfamiliar and interesting to him. He stayed until they broke up the gathering and then he returned to his nap. After that, he would come and sit any time there was a group gathering and he happened to be around to hear it. Listening more carefully each time, more words formed. As time went on, whole phrases repeated in his mind.

Another day, after one of these talks, he went to sit at the edge of the forest. He wasn’t particularly hungry, there was no evidence of danger, there were no urges pulling him one way or another. Just then a strong breeze came through the trees so that all of the different shapes of leaves made a shaking and shivering symphony of sound. The breeze carried smells from near and far. They woke up his nose, but didn’t get so far in as to make him leap for something. The same breeze ruffled his fur lightly and made his skin tingle so that his body shook involuntarily. He looked into the trees where he knew the forest floor so well. He knew where to weave into the thick of the forest when there was danger, where his den was, where there were cool, clear streams to get a drink. He knew the smell of all the other animals in the forest, of the earth under his sensitive feet, and of the plants and trees. Suddenly all that knowledge disappeared. He was still there, the forest was still there, but there was no boundary between the two. It was like that pleasant energy, but more, or less. He shook his head. It was surprising, elating, and frightening. The nuns voices echoed, “Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate.” The phrase repeated in his mind, not like a real thought, not like a person has. More like a hum that hummed with everything else in the world.

Eventually, though very pleased and full of life, the fox found himself wandering back up to the monastery. The old nun was talking again and her words drifted on the air and into the aliveness that he was feeling. There was some comprehension now and memory of what came before this life as a fox. He sat attentively until the nuns started to stand up and silently walk away. He stood also and walked towards the old nun.

What the old nun saw this day was a very old man walking up from the forest towards them and sitting down cross-legged to hear what was said. He got up when everyone else did and paused until the old nun was alone. He walked towards her and bowed. “I am Pai Chang,” he said. “I have lived five hundred lives as a fox. Before that I was the abbot at this place.”

The old nun had remained seated and so he sat on a cushion in front of her. She was not surprised and she was very calm, but her expression was compassionate. She asked with genuine curiosity, “How did you become a fox?”

Pai Chang answered, “Once, a student asked me about enlightenment, if it freed one from the laws of cause and effect. I replied to the student that, ‘Yes, such a one is not subject to cause and effect.’ For that, I became a fox for so long I had forgotten that I was human. Then I heard you.”

The old nun nodded. “And now? How would you answer?”

“That even the enlightened one is subject to cause and effect.”

“How so?” she asked.

“There is no freed-from-cause-and-effect and no subject-to-cause-and-effect. This world of suffering is not different from heaven on earth; only wishing it were otherwise makes it so. There is no enlightenment nor non-enlightenment. There is only this symphony of cause and effect, form in a dance with emptiness. A valley is both form and emptiness and cannot be only one or the other. Because the enlightened person knows this, can’t forget this, they are in harmony with any circumstance.”

“And?”

Pai Chang continued, “Cause and effect, the myriad of actions and reactions, human experiences… these are inevitable, fleeting, and ultimately unimportant. To experience this deeply is to be in love with the world. I became a fox; it was the effect of my attachment to a fixed view. But this was not a problem. If I had struggled against my penance, there would have been no end to suffering for me. So I lived as a fox would. Sages will say, ‘This old man won for himself five hundred lifetimes flowing with the wind.’”

The old nun rose from her cushion. Pai Chang did likewise. She offered him a deep bow and he returned it. A knowing glance was exchanged between them and then Pai Chang returned to sitting on the terrace, facing the forest and hills beyond, in the warmth of a setting sun.

The following day, two nuns were returning from alms rounds, their bowls filled with enough food to share. It was still early as they had set out before dawn. They saw the golden-orange fur of the fox beyond a jumble of rocks. The fox was dead, but peacefully curled up, his nose pointing toward the rising sun. They carried the fox’s body back to the monastery where the nuns all soon gathered and prepared for a ceremonial funeral — a pyre and puja befitting that of one gone beyond cause and effect to flow within it, like the wind.

~

Based on the Zen Koan, Pai Chang’s Fox Here is a traditional look at this koan.

References:

Passing Through The Gateless Barrier: Koan Practice for Real life, translation and commentary by Guo Gu, Shamble Publications, 2016. “This old man won for himself five hundred lifetimes flowing with the wind,” is quoted from this translation of Wu-Men’s commentary on case 2.

The Gateless Barrier: The Wu-Men Kuan, translation and commentary by Robert Aitken, MacMillan, 1991.

“Om, Gate, Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha,” translates as “Om, Gone, Gone, Gone Beyond, Non-Returning, So Be It. It is a profound Buddhist mantra from the Heart Sutra. You could say, it is the wisdom of compassion and the compassion of wisdom that go beyond dualistic concepts to see that all phenomena is not separate. Profound and yet so simple: if you are part of everything and everything is part of you, what so ever can you shut out of your heart?

A retelling of case 2 – Pai Chang’s Fox

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Interlude: On Grace and Grit