Good evening. This weekend, the last three days, we had a session or meditation retreat here, and I spoke about the Foxconn case aid in the Book of Serenity go on collection that I've been going through one at a time. And I wanted to just kind of review some of what we talked about. Actually, most of you were not here this weekend. So this is a really important story in Frizen, and I would say, even more so for American Zen and even more so for the Soto Zen branch coming from Dogen that we follow here. And it's a complicated story with all kinds of

[01:01]

aspects. So we've talked about it for the last three days and it's been studied for a thousand years and these koans or teaching stories are not riddles to explain or figure out or solve but stories about our own practice that we continue studying because there's so many aspects to them. So I'll read the version of the story in the Book of Serenity collection which the cases and verses were from Hongzhe who I translated in Cultivating the Empty Field, some of his practice writings. This is the collection used more often in Soto-sen, and then I'll read from another collection. So, when Baizhang, or Hyakujo is his name in Japanese, some of you may know that, when Baizhang lectured in the hall, there was always an old man who listened to the teaching and then dispersed with the crowd.

[02:04]

One day, he did not leave. Baizhang then asked him, who is it standing there? The old man said, in antiquity, in the time of the ancient Buddha Kashapa, the Buddha in the age before Shakyamuni, before our Buddha, in that age, I lived on this mountain, which is to say he was the teacher on that mountain, the previous Baizhang. A student asked, does a greatly cultivated person still fall into cause and effect or not? I answered him, he does not fall into cause and effect, the old man said. And I fell into a wild fox body for 500 lifetimes. Now I ask you, teacher, to turn a word in my behalf. Bajrang said, a greatly cultivated person is not blind to cause and effect, or does not ignore cause and effect. The old man was greatly awakened at these words.

[03:08]

So that's the basic story. And the issue is karma, or cause and effect. even after long practice, a greatly cultivated person, do they fall into cause and effect or not? And the old man had said, no, they don't fall into cause and effect or not. They see, and which is to say, they see beyond cause and effect to the unconditioned ultimate nature of things that are not that do not fall under cause and effect. Bai Zhang said they do not ignore cause and effect. And supposedly because of that response, the old man was awakened. And then there's more to the story, which I think maybe was added later in a later version of the Lamp Transmission text. But this is the version that many people know from the Gateless Barrier Koan collection, Gateless Gate, Wumankan in Japanese, Wumenguan in Chinese.

[04:20]

And in this one, the story continues. After the old man experienced great awakening, in the longer version, he bowed and said to Baizhang, I am now released from the wild fox body and my corpse, my fox corpse is lying behind the gates of the temple. Master, may I dare to request that you bury it with the rites accompanying a deceased monk? So the master instructed the monk in charge of the rules for or the Eno as we say in Japanese, which are way non-Chinese. In Sanskrit, that's karmadana. So the word for Eno in Sanskrit is the person who gives and grants karma. Anyway, he asked them to strike the clappers and announced to the assembly that the burial of a deceased monk would take place after the midday meal.

[05:25]

The monks were all puzzled, discussing this and wondering why could this be, as all of the monks were healthy, and there hadn't been anyone who was sick in the infirmary, in the Nirvana Hall. After the meal, the story goes on, the master led the assembly behind the temple gates where he used his staff to uncover the carcass of a wild fox lying under a large rock. The fox corpse was cremated in accord with the regulations for monks' funerals, which are very fancy. So there's many aspects to the story. And I want to come back to the main issue about cause and effect. But just to say, this Baizhang is, in Zen lore, a teacher who supposedly created the first rules for monastic practice in China. So he was the one who represented the forms, and here he was doing this fancy ceremony for a fox.

[06:30]

And we talked over the weekend about foxes. And there are people here who really like foxes. And I actually do, too. And foxes in Western lore are tricksters, but also sometimes cute and benevolent. In East Asian lore, they are usually not just tricksters, but malevolent. And so this is a kind of exorcism that Baizhang performed. So there's all kinds of aspects to this story that get into the supernatural and into spirits and so forth. But I want to focus on the main teaching of karma. Anyway, just to finish the longer version of the story, that evening in his sermon in the Dharma Hall, Baizhang told the whole story, including his interaction with the old man. And thereupon, one of his students, Wangbo, in Japanese Obaku, who later became the teacher of Linji or Rinzai, asked his teacher Baizhang, this old man was transfigured into a wild fox for 500 lifetimes because he used an incorrect pivot word, because he spoke incorrectly.

[07:43]

Suppose his words had not been incorrect, then what would have happened? The master replied, come up here and I'll explain it to you. After hesitating, Huang Po approached Bai Zhang and slapped him. Bai Zhang clapped his hands and laughed and said, I thought I was only the barbarian who had a red beard, but here is another red bearded barbarian. So that's a reference to Bodhi Dharma, but also to the fox. Okay, that's the longer version of the story, but I want to focus on just the main issue about not being blind to cause and effect. There are many, many, again, many aspects to this story. One point is that in most of the translations, of the gateless barrier collection into English, it doesn't say, does a greatly cultivated person fall into cause and effect?

[08:46]

It says, does an enlightened person to fall into cause and effect? And this translation is used by Robert Aitken, Shibuyama, Imaneko, and Sekita. So it seems like this maybe was an interpretation taken from Japanese, I don't know. But this translation, I would say mistranslation has been a major problem in American Zen. So translations by more academic translators like Stephen Heine and Thomas Cleary say a greatly cultivated person. So in both versions of the story, the point is somebody who's practiced long and with great fullness, do they fall into cause and effect or not? So I talked about this more on Saturday, but just to say that this idea of an enlightened person again, has been a huge problem in not just Zen, but in American Buddhism.

[09:50]

This idea that there are enlightened people and that they may be above cause and effect has caused a lot of harm, because some teachers have believed it. So it's possible to have dramatic experiences of seeing beyond causes and conditions, of seeing the ultimate, of awakening, and that's the beginning of practice. So such experiences, they happen, and they can be wonderful, but the point of practice is not reaching some, it's not getting high, it's not reaching some perfect state, it's not reaching some exaltation, it's not going beyond cause and effect, and as Baizhang said, a greatly cultivated person is not blind or does not ignore cause and effect, so we've had terrible transgressions from teachers who thought they were enlightened, whatever that means.

[10:53]

Awakening is something that happens, it is There are awakened teachings, awakened experiences, awakened activity and awakened awareness. There are not people who are enlightened. Enlightenment is not something you can get. So it's a description of a way of being. Anyway, that's an important footnote for us about this mistranslation. But I want to focus on, I want to leave time for discussion. And we had lots of good discussion over the weekend. Well, I'll just read a little bit from Wansong about the two sides here. He says, not falling into cause and effect, which the old man had said, is forced denial, a nihilistic view. So this is, a denial of our lives.

[11:55]

This is an attachment to emptiness. There are various ways of talking about it. As the harmony of difference and sameness that we just chanted says, according with sameness is still not enlightenment. So seeing wholeness, seeing oneness, even having some great understanding of it is great, but that's not the point. Wansong, the commentator in the book of Sranati, goes on to say, not being blind to cause and effect is finding the wondrous along with the flow. So right in the ordinary world of cause and effect, of phenomenal world, is, for bodhisattva teaching, is the place of awakening, is the place of nirvana. So not being blind to cause and effect is finding the wondrous along with the flow. So again, there's so much more to say about this, but I want to focus on how this story was important for Dogen, the 13th century founder of what we now call Soto Zen.

[13:17]

A few things to say about that. Yes? The wondrous. Right in the flow of cause and effects. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, that's Thomas Cleary's translation of one song. So this issue of not ignoring cause and effect even for someone who's with great experience of practice, who has deeply cultivated themselves, is very important. This is practical for us just in terms of thinking about, you know, the things that come up in zazen. And I'm not talking about necessarily about one experience or particular experiences, although those are relevant too, but

[14:25]

just in the regular daily practice or regular practice several times a week of just stopping, sitting down, facing the wall, sitting upright and relaxed. This Sazen we've just been doing. Right in the middle of that, of course, thoughts and feelings come up. Our brain continues to secrete thoughts. So there are sometimes spaces in between the thoughts and feelings where we're not caught in conditioning. But still, the phenomenal world in our own, you know, thoughts of the past, regrets, things we might have done that we didn't, things we did that we might not have done, we all have that. So how do we see all the stuff that comes up.

[15:26]

And, you know, being present, you know, in the moment, so to speak, being mindful as we sit, includes all of the past and all of the future. So the point of cause and effect is that everything that happens has many causes, multiple dependent co-arisings allow you to be sitting on your seat right now, here, this evening. And everything we do has an effect. So how do we move forward, given all of the combinations of causes and conditions that contribute to how it is here now, then how do we respond to all of that personally and in the world? So this is a key issue in our practice, integrating our experience of the universal or the ultimate or the deep interconnectedness of things with

[16:37]

our everyday activities and with our responses to them and with our responses to the world. So for Dogen, this was a really important koan. He wrote two essays focused on this koan, although there are many other references, in Shobo Genzo, his large collection of essays, one in 1244, one in 1255. The first one, well, just to say, I did not read the commentary by Wu Man or Mu Man to the Gateless Barrier. He talks about the fox's 500 lives as 500 lifetimes of elegance. And he says, not falling into cause and effect, not obscuring cause and effect, are like two sides of the same coin. So a lot of the Chinese commentary before Dogen, and the commentary now, talks about the

[17:46]

in the way in which these are the same, not different, these two sides, not being caught by cause and effect, and not ignoring or being blind to cause and effect. And in Dogen's first essay, he takes that side mostly, or he sees that relationship The second essay is late in his life, and he talks about deep faith in cause and effect. And this faith aspect is important, trusting our karma, trusting that here we are, trusting that we can move forward in the world of cause and effect. But he takes a very strong emphasis on not ignoring cause and effect. It's really, I would say, the one place in Dogen's teaching where he really shifts something in terms of his philosophy. There are other times where he says different, somewhat different things depending on the audience, but anyway, I wanted to, I've been in each of the talks reading three of the

[18:53]

discussions he had in his short talks in his extensive record, Ehe Koroku, about this story. So, Dharamhala Discourse number 94 in 1242, he told the story and then said, mountains, rivers, and the great earth are the cave of the wild fox. So this wild fox, who fell into being a wild fox by ignoring karma. This whole world is the great cave of the wild fox, mountains, rivers, and the great earth. Here we are. In some ways we're all wild foxes caught by denying our karma, by ignoring our karma. Then he says, cause and effect are very clear and not a personal matter. And he has a poetic image.

[20:00]

Partridges sing incessantly in late spring and a hundred flowers fade. Cause and effect are very clear and not a personal matter. This is really important. We, and I'll come back to it more in a little bit, but just to say that cause and effect is personal, but it's not just a personal matter. So we all have our own past activities and choices and various, various things that happened in our life, and again, regrets, but also things that we feel good about. But we could all imagine, you know, if we had taken slightly different choices at different points, the different life that we might have.

[21:00]

But anyway, here we are. But it's also that cause and effect is not a personal matter. It's a communal, collective event. And we are each all individually affected by this. In traditional Buddhism, they tend to focus on personal karma and that people are reborn based on their past activities. But we're all affected very much by the collective karma of our country and of our society and of humanity. There's so many easy examples, just the effect that affects all of us of the history of our country's slavery and racism, of killing off native peoples, cultures are almost doing so, and so forth. The effect on the planet of our ignoring the well-being of the planet, the environment, which I'll come back to.

[22:04]

Dogen says very clearly, cause and effect are very clear and not just a personal matter. So this is important, this not ignoring cause and effect. People can use spiritual practice as a way of denying or avoiding what's happening in the world and what's happening in their own lives. And we can use all kinds of things. One of our precepts is not to intoxicate mind or body of self or others. And this intoxication is not just a matter of abusing substances, but of avoiding paying attention to denying the reality that's in front of us and in our world. So I'll come back to that, but I wanted to talk a little more about Dogen's response to this case, to this Fox story.

[23:07]

In 1246, on Darmahal Discourse 205, he said, told the story of the fox and then said, because of the previous Baizhang saying that he did not fall into cause and effect, why did he descend into a wild fox body? So, there's a question there too. How could that, what's the cause and effect of that? of that mistaken teaching leading him to become a fox for 500 lifetimes. Then he says, as to the later Baizhang saying he was not blind to cause and effect, how did this cause the release from the wild fox body? So that's also a question, and that's part of what, part of the interaction with Huang Po challenging his teacher relates to that. Then Dogen said, I can't stand this wild fox monster shaking his head and wagging his tail. Stop.

[24:08]

Stop." So, Duncan was bothered by this story. deeply bothered by this story, deeply troubled. What's going on here? And so I'm, you know, trying to go over it a little bit tonight, but this is a story that has many implications. In his last year, in 1252, his last year of teaching, he died the next year, Dharma Hall Discourse 510, one of his last talks, he said, students of the way cannot dismiss cause and effect. If you discard cause and effect, you will ultimately deviate from practice realization. After relating the story of Bai Zhang's fox, Dogen said, someone doubted this saying, a wild fox is an animal. How could it remember 500 lifetimes? This doubt is most foolish. You should know that various living beings, either animal or human, are inherently endowed with the power to know past lives.

[25:13]

So this is an interesting aspect of this story that we think we are superior to the rest of creation, plants and animals, and that only humans can be. aware of cause and effect, and Dogen is saying that's not true. And there are implications of that for the way our species is causing mass extinctions of other species anyway. That's a whole other side of this, just the question of what is our relationship to the world and other animals. Then Dogen says, someone said not falling into cause and effect and not ignoring are one and the same. And yet either falling or being released simply happens automatically. So such views, Dogen says, are completely outside the way, heretical, against the Tao.

[26:18]

Today, IA Haywell, Dogen will add a comment. If you say people of great cultivation do not fall into cause and effect, you are certainly dismissing cause and effect. If you say they do not ignore cause and effect, you have not yet avoided counting the neighbor's treasure. So he's also seeing issues with both sides, but he's taking a very strong position about the importance of not ignoring, not being blind, studying cause and effect. And so the 16 precepts that we follow, that Dogen Dogen created those versions of the precepts are very strong as part of our practice. After a pause, Dogen said in that talk, after many years of residing on this mountain, a black staff becomes a dragon, and this morning arouses the wind and thunder. So he was making a strong statement about his feelings about the importance of not ignoring cause and effect.

[27:24]

And just to add a little bit, about him saying this is not a personal matter. We see this very clearly. I have a number of friends and family. I have a cousin in Wilmington. I don't know yet how he is, but we have this massive hurricane and flooding in the southeast, and our government saw fit to transfer $10 million from FEMA in response to such events to ICE that is now building detention camps on the southern border. and housing now 12,800 children detained indefinitely. So we live in a society with an illegitimate government and an injustice system. I just have to say that. And we have this climate damage that the state of North Carolina made it illegal for any government official to even use the word climate change.

[28:33]

So this is a good case of denying cause and effect. We won't even talk about it, and yet here they are with this massive flooding, and we have fires on the West Coast, and so forth. So this is a product of ignoring cause and effect in a radical, rampant, intentional, and disgusting way. People making a profit from it. Fossil fuel industry, and the prison industry, and so forth. of on the front line of forest firefighters, firefighters in California are incarcerated prisoners who get two days off their sentence for one day actually on the front lines fighting fire. And they put the prisoners right in the front in the most dangerous places. And they get paid a dollar a day for that. And so they become really excellent firefighters.

[29:34]

After they leave prison, though, they're not allowed to get jobs with the state as firefighters because they're felons. So we have a society that is rampantly ignoring cause and effect. Well, I just want to close by mentioning our 16 precepts, because this is, in some ways, Dogen's response to this koan of not ignoring cause and effect. So the 16, the way we say them, I take refuge in Buddha, I take refuge in Dharma, I take refuge in Sangha. So to come home to, to turn to, awakening, Buddha, the awakened one, the awakening in everything. I take refuge in Dharma, the truth and the teaching about the truth and reality. as opposed to denying reality. I take refuge in Sangha, so seeing the community and the commonality of karma. Then three pure precepts, which can be, the first two can be translated in various ways, but I vow to embrace and sustain right conduct.

[30:40]

I vow to embrace and sustain all good. I vow to embrace and sustain all beings. This is very important, one of the most important ones to my mind, just to, this inclusivity, of our practice. We face the wall not to build walls to block out certain people or certain beings or, you know, to keep foxes out, to keep Mexicans out or Muslims or, you know, whatever. So, all beings. And then there's 10 grave precepts, which are actually guidelines to not ignoring cause and effect. They're not commandments like thou shalt not, although they sound a little bit like it. The way we read them, a disciple of Buddha does not kill. And all of them have a range of meanings. It also means to support life. There's a positive meaning to all of them. And it also means not just personally, but to support others not to kill. A disciple of Buddha does not take what is not given. Disciple of Buddha does not misuse sexuality.

[31:42]

Disciple of Buddha does not lie. Disciple of Buddha does not intoxicate mind or body of self or others. Disciple of Buddha does not speak of the faults of others. We can talk about problems we have with others, but to not speak of the faults, to not get into blame, personal blame. So this, the problem with Ignoring cause and effect is something, even in our common karma, that has many causes and conditions. Our current president is just a symptom of a long karma of human indifference and stubbornness. Disciple of Buddha does not praise self at the expense of others. Disciple of Buddha is not possessive of anything. Disciple of Buddha does not harbor ill will. When anger arises, how do we use that energy instead of holding onto it and harboring hatred? Disciple of Buddha does not disparage the three treasures.

[32:44]

So I just thought I'd read those as a way of talking about our way of paying attention to cause and effect in everyday activity on many levels, as opposed to ignoring cause and effect or thinking we're above cause and effect. So there's lots more to say, but I want to take a little time for questions, comments, or responses. A few of you were here for some of the talks this weekend, and can add maybe. But any of you, any comments or questions or responses, please feel free. Yes, Chair. Right. Yeah, go ahead, I'm sorry.

[33:46]

Yeah, so the old man went away. So part of the mythology of foxes in Asia is that foxes possess people. appear as people. There are pictures of this koan which show the old man with a Buddhist robe, but a foxtail coming out behind him. So there's that, so there's this folklore, there's a whole book about this koan by Stephen Hine, Shifting, Shaping, Text, Philosophy and Folklore in the Fox Koan, and he goes much more into the supernatural side and foxes, but yeah. He was released. He was free from birth and death. He was cremated. His fox body was cremated and he was given this very special monk's funeral.

[34:52]

So other questions or comments about the story? Yes, Ed? For three years, I lived in what was called the Fox River Valley, which is west of Chicago. It's associated with the river, and there are foxes there. In fact, I would sight them, and every time I did, and it was rare, though, but once every day, well, once every day, I'd come across one or two. They were red-haired. Yes. So I have no idea really how clever they are relative to other animals. But the idea that knowledge, the nature of knowledge is somehow a good thing or a bad thing may not take into account, at least in my own mind, the fact that knowledge and purpose are very separate entities in the mind.

[36:04]

And it is how knowledge is employed that establishes capacity to contribute to human suffering. So cause and effect is another phrase, at least in part, for knowledge itself. The nature of knowledge is neutral, presented to us as such. So we cannot just say have knowledge and not be responsible for assigning purpose to it. So ignoring cause and effect is ignoring the consequences of our actions and ignoring the causes that produce this. So yeah, so the intention and the ethical dimension of what we do with knowledge. Yeah, good. And yeah, I think there are red foxes and gray foxes.

[37:08]

I saw a fox walk right in front of me once, a green gulch, a red fox. Other comments, reflections? Questions about this weird story? Yes, Kirsten. Yeah, because, well, okay. I think, well, we've had experiences of people who thought they were, teachers who thought they were enlightened and ignored cause and effect and created lots of trouble.

[38:11]

And we have examples of that all over in our society, people who think they will not suffer the consequences in some way, or they can get away with creating. Well, no, not necessarily. In some cases, it's that. In some cases, it's just that they think they won't make mistakes or something. So it's important to make mistakes, and we all do. There's a way of thinking of it, though, going back to the harmony of difference and sameness, where If you don't ignore cause and effect, if you are really aware of the possible consequences of your actions, you might not get caught by cause and effect. So that may be part of it.

[39:13]

I think it's possible to, if you're really grounded in not falling into, not ignoring cause and effect, if you really, so in the level of sitting zazen and knowing your own karma, if you see physically as possible in Extended Zazen practice. If you're aware of your own grasping and anger and confusion, and really see those patterns of greed and so forth, and fear and frustration and all of that, that come up and they do come up. This is what's difficult about this practice, not getting your legs into some funny position, but sustaining a practice of actually paying attention to cause and effect in the world, but also within ourselves. But if you really become intimate and familiar and friendly with your own stuff, I think that's a psychological term, I don't know, that you have the capacity to not act it out,

[40:22]

or at least some of the time, or to see that stuff coming up, to see your own patterns of greed, or anger, or lust, or confusion, or fear coming up, and respond without acting automatically, reactively. This is an example of not being caught by cause and effect, but only if you're really not ignoring it. So that would be my way of synthesizing. So in that sense, yeah, I could see both sides are related or can be integrated and harmonized. So there's a whole history of commentary on this story in China about how they're not, you know, how, Wu Min, for example, saying that the fox had 500 lifetimes of elegance, according to one translation, that then can lead to arrogance.

[41:26]

So this was what, anyway, Dogen was taking one side and saying very strongly, we have to look at cause and effect, we have to be aware of the precepts or other ways of paying attention to what we do, the ethical side. So it's complicated, it's subtle actually. So I'm not sure what this old guy who became a fox was thinking when he said, you know, a greatly cultivated person doesn't fall into cause and effect. There's various possibilities. Well, if there's not any further comments, we can do our four bodhisattva vows of paying attention to cause and effect, which we chant three times.

[42:37]

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