Once Ejo asked: "What is meant
by the expression:'Cause and effect are not clouded'?"
This expression
is found in the famous Koan known as "The Wild Fox" or "Hyakujo's
Fox" and the following is the first part of the story as it appears in the
Mumonkan:
When Hyakujo (also known as Pai-Chang Huai-Hai) delivered a certain
series of sermons, an old man always followed the monks to the main hall and listened
to him. When the monks left the hall, the old man would also leave. One day, however,
he remained behind and Hyakujo asked him, "Who are you, standing there before
me?" The old man replied, "I am not a human being. In the old days of
Kaashyapa buddha, I was a head monk living here on this mountain. One day a student
asked me,'Does a man of enlightenment fall under the yoke of causation or not?'
I answered,'No, he does not.' Since then I have been doomed to undergo five hundred
rebirths as a fox. I beg you now to give the turning word to release me from my
life as a fox. Tell me, does a man of Enlightenment fall under the yoke of causation
or not?" Hyakujo answered, "He does not ignore [cloud] causation [cause
and effect]." No sooner had the old man heard these words than he was Enlightened.
"Causation"
in this passage refers to "moral causation." The Buddhist concept of
karma acknowledges that good/bad deeds, thoughts, and so forth result in good/bad
effects. Thus the import of the question posed by the "fox" is whether
or not the enlightened person is subject to Karma. Hyakujo's answer, in effect,
affirms that the enlightened person is subject to moral causation. Katsuki Sekida
offers a common Zen interpretation of this passage in his comment: "Thus
to ignore causation only compounds one's malady. To recognize causation constitutes
the remedy for it."
Dogen's employment of this story in the "Daishugyo"
chapter of the Shobogenzo implies that, on one level, he thinks Hyakujo's answer
indeed provides a "remedy" for the old man's predicament. Yet Dogen
was rarely content with merely citing traditional Zen interpretations of passages;
typically, he sought to push his students to a further understanding by a creative
reinterpretation of a passage. Lest his disciple therefore think this not-ignoring/recognition
of causation is de facto a release from it in an ultimate sense, Dogen answers
that the passage means "cause and effect are immovable." In other words,
moral causation, for Dogen, is an inexorable fact of human existence.
Given
this fact, Ejo then asks how we can ever "escape" moral causation. Dogen's
response is enigmatic: "Cause and effect arise at the same time." Nowhere
in the Shobogenzo Zuimonki does he further clarify this passage. However, the
key to understanding this statement can be gleaned from his discussion of causation
in the "Shoakumakusa" chapter of the Shobogenzo, wherein he observes
that "cause is not before and effect is not after." As Hee-Jin Kim explains,
Dogen saw cause and effect as absolutely discontinuous moments that, in any given
action, arise simultaneously from "thusness." Therefore,
...no sooner
does one choose and act according to a particular course of action than are the
results thereof (heavens, hells, or otherwise) realized in it.... Man lives in
the midst of causation from which he cannot escape even for a moment; nevertheless,
he can live from moment to moment in such a way that these moments are the fulfilled
moments of moral and spiritual freedom and purity in thusness.
The above "Ejo-Dogen"
comentary is courtesy of: Moral Action and Enlightenment According to Dogen
See
also: What The Buddha Said
HYAKUJO'S FOX: Commentaries from the Mumonkan
Summary:
A Zen master had been reborn as a fox because he taught that a Buddha is not subject
to his Karma. Hyakujo liberated him by correcting that a Buddha was united with
it. The disciple Obaku asked what if Zen masters always gave the right answer.
Then avoided a slap by giving one.
Whether the Enlightened man is subject to
Karma is an important philosophical question. If so, what's the use of Enlightenment?
If not, then the law of causation is not universal. The Buddha taught that philosophy
is not the way (Tao) since it inevitably leads to such contradictions. Hyakujo's
solution was ingenious and correct. It demonstrated that an Enlightened man can
perform philosophical manipulation, but it was not Zen. By solving his dilemma
philosophically, he encouraged the "fox"'s reliance on such means which
will lead him to new contradictions. Thus Obaku's rejection was correct. Nevertheless
the "fox" was Enlightened. Hyakujo was lucky. Five hundred times a "fox"
had so well prepared the soil that the defects of the seed couldn't prevent the
germination. What he should have said was: "The Enlightened man is one with
the law of causation."
In the "Daishugyo" fascicle, Dogen finds
a number of problems with the fox story. We are not told, for example, what happened
to the old man after his liberation from the body of the fox. Dogen also questions
the probability of a Zen master being reborn as a fox for such a cryptic answer
since traditional Zen koans are replete with such cryptic phrases. Dogen goes
so far as to say in one place that he doubts the veracity of the fox story itself
and later asserts that Pai-chang was not telling the full story. The crux of the
"Daishugyo fascicle is Dogen's argument against fundamental misunderstandings
of the fox story:
All of those who have not yet seen and heard the Buddha Dharma
say that after the end of his rebirths as a fox the "old master" [or
whatever he was] attained Supreme Enlightenment (daigo) and that the fox body
was completely absorbed into the ocean nature of original Enlightenment (hongaku
no shogai). This meaning implies the erroneous notion of "returning to an
original self" (honga ni kaeru). This has never been a Buddhist teaching.
Moreover, if we say that the fox had no original nature (honsho), that the fox
was not originally Enlightened (hongaku nashi) : this [also] is not the Buddha
Dharma.
We see here Dogen's traditional affirmation of Original Nature and
Buddha Nature, but a rejection of any substantialist or transcendental interpretation.
Dogen continues to argue that it is not the intent of the story to say that "not
falling into cause and effect" is to "negate cause and effect"
(hatsumu inga). Dogen is here affirming the traditional Buddhist teaching of cause
and effect, but calling into question our understanding of cause and effect (Karma)
and its relation to liberation.
The position of the "Critical Buddhists"
such as Hakamaya and Matsumoto is that in the "Jinshin inga" fascicle
and other fascicles of the twelve-fascicle Shobogenzo, Dogen abandons the hongaku
position still evident in the "Daishugyo" fascicle, which, as Heine
summarizes, is a transformation
... from a metaphysical view that draws unwittingly
from animism or naturalism and seeks a single source of reality (dhaatu) beyond
causality to a literal, strict karmic determinism that emphasizes a moral imperative
based on the fundamental condition that karmic retribution is active in each impermanent
moment.
But is Karma for Dogen really a kind of strict determinism, such that
if cause "a" occurs then effect "b" must necessarily occur
regardless of whatever other factors may come into play? The "Daishugyo"
fascicle challenges our preconceived notion of Karma and cause and effect (inga),
but the twelve-fascicle Shobogenzo seems to take a more simplistic stance. As
Heine has pointed out, in the twelve-fascicle text, Dogen refers to miracles and
magical deeds to illustrate the meaning of Karma. Yet, if we read beyond the mythical
element of these tales to his conclusions, we find a clear rejection of a deterministic
understanding of Karma.
Consider, for example, Dogen's "Hotsu bodaishin,"
in the twelve-fascicle edition, where he emphasizes the "arising of the "Bodhi-mind"
(bodaishin), which entails the vow to save all others before oneself" (ji
mitokudo sendota). If causality is nothing other than "if 'a' then necessarily
'b'," then "Hotsu bodaishin" becomes nonsensical, since no other
causal agency other than the Self can then have anything to do with salvation.
This would clearly imply a kind of personal atomic causality where the Self is
isolated from all "external" influences--precisely the kind of position
that Dogen is anxious to avoid.
We must remember that positive acts also produce
positive Karma, and positive Karma interacts with negative Karma. In Dogen's "Kuyo
shobutsu," in the twelve-fascicle edition, we read that "There is great
fruit from small causes, and great benefit from small acts." The implication
here is that soteriological Karma is more powerful than negative Karma. In "Sanji-go,"
in the twelve-fascicle edition, we read a story from the Abhidharma-mahaavibhaasaa-`saastra
(sec. 69) that tells of a good man (throughout this life), who, upon dying, finds
that he is to be reborn in a hell. At first he is resentful, believing himself
destined for a heavenly rebirth. But he then realizes that the hellish rebirth
was for evil that he had done in a previous life. This realization (wisdom) changed
his Karma such that he was in fact reborn in a heavenly realm.
These passages
show that Dogen by no means had a simplistic and deterministic view of Karma.
For Dogen, Karma is not a static, substantial, linear series of causes and effects.
There is always the possibility of change, especially through the attainment of
wisdom. Thus Dogen, without denying the causal structure of life and practice,
rejects a rigid interpretation of Karma in favor of a fluid, Karmic, interdependent
universe that depends upon our actions and understanding as part of its causal
structure. As Kagamishima has argued, Dogen was approaching the problem of causality
from different standpoints in the "Daishugyo" and the twelve-fascicle
texts. I have worked to show that the younger Dogen tended toward the dialectical
(koan) mode of expression, whereas the late Dogen tended more toward a didactic
and mythic mode. In the twelve-fascicle Shobogenzo, we must look to the larger
context of the combined texts of "Kuyo shobutsu," "Jinshin inga,"
and "Sanji-go," and so on to find the positions already suggested in
"Dai- shugyo." For the Dogen of the twelve-fascicle texts, "not
falling into [the grip] of causality" was clearly being misinterpreted by
many Chinese masters and students and, more importantly, by a significant number
of Dogen's own students, to mean "transcending Karma." Although Dogen
never suggests such a notion of transcendence in "Daishugyo," he apparently
thought that the explicit rejection of such transcendence had by that time become
necessary.