One Word Off, Five Hundred Fox Lives: Baizhang's Wild Fox Koan

A few days ago I was reading the Gateless Gate and came to the second case, "Baizhang's Wild Fox." When I finished, I sat in my chair for a long while.

Funny thing — I wrote about Master Baizhang not long ago. The one with "a day without work is a day without food," the old monk who still worked the fields at ninety. His stories aren't finished. This one is stranger than the farming one, and a little scarier too.

Here is the story.

Master Baizhang was teaching on the mountain. Among the listeners there was always an old man. He came with everyone else, listened, and left. Nobody thought it strange. One day, after everyone had gone, the old man stayed. He stood there and said to Baizhang: I am not a human. Long ago, in the time of Buddha Kashyapa, I lived on this mountain. I was the abbot here.

One day a student asked me: Does a great practitioner still fall into cause and effect?

I answered: No. They do not fall into cause and effect.

For that one answer, I fell into the body of a wild fox, for five hundred lives. Five hundred lifetimes, all of them a fox. He said: I have come today to ask you to answer it for me. You tell me — does a great practitioner still fall into cause and effect?

Baizhang looked at him and said four words: They are not blind to cause and effect.

At those words, the old man woke up. He bowed and said: I am free of the fox body now. In the cave behind the mountain there is a dead fox. Please cremate it with the rites of a monk.

The next day, Baizhang led the whole monastery up the mountain, pulled the dead fox out of the cave with his staff, and gave it a monk's funeral.

That's the story.

The first time I read it, I was lost. "Do not fall into" and "not blind to" — one word apart. One word, five hundred years. That is an expensive word.

And honestly, my first feeling was that the old man got a raw deal. "Do not fall into cause and effect" doesn't sound that wrong. If you practice deeply enough, shouldn't you go beyond cause and effect? Don't the sutras speak of liberation? He was an abbot for hundreds of years, he got one word wrong, and he was a fox for five hundred lives. Isn't that punishment a little heavy?

I carried that question for two days, and the more I sat with it, the more I felt this story isn't about punishment at all.

Here is what I came to — I could be wrong.

"Do not fall into cause and effect" is an exemption ticket. What it says underneath is: I have practiced to a certain level, so cause and effect no longer applies to me. The good I have done, the precepts I have kept, the hours of sitting — I have saved up enough credit. From now on, when a bad result comes, I can say, "this one doesn't count."

Sound familiar? It did to me.

I catch myself in this all the time. I have chanted for years — why am I still anxious? I have done so many good things — why did trouble still come to my family? Three years of sitting — why do I still lose sleep, still squabble with people? Whenever I think like that, I am reaching into my pocket for a ticket. I practiced, so I deserve good things, and bad things should go around me.

The ticket comes out. The world doesn't accept it. Then comes the resentment, then the doubt, then "practice doesn't work."

That old man was probably the same, after centuries as an abbot. When he answered "do not fall into," he wasn't lying to the student. He probably believed it. Practitioners hold so many quiet fantasies about transcending — beyond cause and effect, beyond impermanence, beyond birth, aging, sickness and death. The fantasy hides well, because it looks exactly like diligence.

And "not blind to cause and effect"? Blind means hidden, clouded, unclear. Not blind means: seeing it all, clearly.

Not falling outside of it — seeing it clearly.

What you plant is what you get, plainly. Every thought, every word, every act sits inside cause and effect, and none of it escapes — and still, no panic, no hiding. Like a clear-eyed person walking in the rain: you know you will get wet, so you walk this stretch well. You don't have to pretend the rain isn't there, and you don't have to stop leaving the house.

I turned these two words over for a long time, and I think the difference isn't scholarship. It's a hope, buried very deep, in that old man's heart — and in mine:

Behind "do not fall into cause and effect" hides a hope: practice is for paying off debts.

"Not blind to cause and effect" sets the hope down: practice is for seeing clearly.

One wants to be exempt. The other is simply awake.

The road that wants exemption grows more fearful the further you walk, because sooner or later something comes that can't be paid off. The road of being awake grows wider, because there is nothing that needs paying off.

At those four words, the old man woke, and the fox body fell away on the spot. I used to find these "awakened at a single word" moments exaggerated. One sentence and you're free? Now I understand a little. Baizhang didn't pardon him. He saw it himself. What locked him into five hundred fox lives was never cause and effect — it was the hope that "I can be beyond cause and effect." The moment the hope was set down, the lock opened.

And then my favorite part — the next day, Baizhang took the whole monastery up the mountain, pulled the fox's body from the cave, and cremated it with a monk's rites.

For a fox, they held a monk's funeral.

There is no doctrine in that scene, and it moves me every time. This is where Zen gets you. It didn't say, "this fox was a lesson in karma, take warning." It said: this was one of our elders. He sought the way for five hundred years. When he went, someone should see him off.

I have been thinking about that old man these past days. The story says he came regularly to hear the dharma — meaning, through five hundred fox lives, he still came, year after year, to listen. A fox, auditing human lectures, for centuries. He was never there to be forgiven. He was there waiting for that one word.

When I got here, I touched the beads on my wrist. We all carry an exemption ticket of our own: the years of vegetarian meals, the exercise kept up, the good deeds, the sutras copied. None of that is bad. It's all good. It's the hope hidden underneath that's worth one clear look. And seeing it clearly doesn't mean dropping the good deeds. It means dropping the trade.

I'll stop here for today. It's raining outside, not hard.

Three questions, for whoever read this far:

1. What is your exemption ticket — the "I've done this, so that shouldn't happen to me"?

2. If practice and good deeds can't pay off debts, would you still keep going? What would be your reason?

3. Walking in the rain, wide awake — is there something in your life where you've been pretending the rain isn't falling?