CONVERSATIONS 10

 FOX ROCK

(Baizhang Huaihai 百丈懷海 720-814)

The disciples of Baizhang Huaihai observed a moment of silence, standing over the emaciated body of their master. They then wrapped him in his best patchwork robe and carried him to the lichen covered rock behind the temple. The stones were already laid, the pyre readied. Huaihai had given his directions: he wanted no ritual, no sorrowful chanting, no incense wasted. His shrouded body was laid on the pyre, candles were lit, heads briefly bowed, and the candles then tossed into the pyre. The ashes would be scattered about Fox Rock.

Fox Rock

Huli had guided me through the thick copse of bamboo behind the temple kitchen. He had stopped just short of the lichen covered stone, and had simply pointed. A large mottled rock sat like some petrified Buddha with an inscription etched into its face that read Universal Pure Rules. Huaihai’s rules. And just off to one side was the raised, flat rock where the monk himself had so often sat in meditation.

Despite my general dislike for Huaihai’s manner—a martinet, he seemed, a dyed in the wool Confucian—I approached Fox Rock with an undeniable reverence. I knew the story: Monks who were not well versed in the Chan Way often were labeled ‘wild fox monks’ for their superficial understanding of Chan. The source of that label was an old tale that had spread quickly through Chan and Zen temples after appearing in a 13th century compilation of such stories titled The Gateless Gate. The story is this:

Pochang, the master of Baizhang Temple, had become aware of an old man standing at the back of the hall listening intently. The old man wore a thin, worn robe, was barefoot, and always stood just inside the doorway in the shadows, watching and listening, keeping himself apart from the assembly of monks who had gathered to hear Pochang lecture on the scriptures. One day, after the lecture was finished, the old man remained behind. Pochang approached him and asked, "Who are you, and what do you want?"

The elder replied, "To be honest, I must explain that I am not a human. In a past age, I was here on this mountain following the Way. One day, a student asked me, 'Do great practitioners still fall into cause and effect?' And I told him, 'No, they do not fall into cause and effect.'

The old man bowed his head. Sighed.

‘Because of this error of mine, I became a wild fox spirit for five hundred years and cannot break free. Please, Master, enlighten me, so that I can be liberated from the suffering of being a fox spirit.’

Pochang nodded and said, ‘Just ask me the question that your student asked you that day.’

The old man thought for a moment, then said, "I understand. I ask you then, Master, do great practitioners still fall under the law of cause and effect?’

Pochang replied, "Neither and both.”

The old man’s shoulders slumped. He smiled then, and nodded. “Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course. I denied because I did not understand. Of course.’

Enlightenment, awareness, came with the words of Pochang. The old man bowed deeply to the hundred peaks Chan master to express his gratitude. He said, "I thank you for your guidance. You have enabled me to transcend that pernicious fox form. I will be at the back mountain cliff, find me there. I pray for your compassion so that I might be buried according to the rules of the Buddhist community."

The following morning the body of a fox was found by the large lichen covered stone behind the temple. Pochang directed the dead fox to be cremated with all due ceremony, and its ashes scattered about the stone.

I, unfortunately, was not enlightened. Huli grinned, and punched my shoulder.

“Silly fellow. The Buddha taught if you got a cause, you gotta have an effect. Simple. No exceptions. According to these guys, even the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, had head splitting aches and pains for three days due to the law of cause and effect.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I get that. “Newton’s Third Law. But neither? and both?”

“No cause, no effect. No effect, no cause. If I don’t hit the rock, I got nothing to say; but what I got to say is still here,” tapping his temple with his blunt forefinger.

I almost got that. We walked back to town and tucked into some bowls of steamed rice and boiled dandelion greens. The bland rice and bitter greens gave me the solution to the confusion. If you kick a stone, it’s hard. If you are aware of its physical properties, molecules and atoms, that same stone has little substance. Both a solid and a void. Both, yet neither. Bitter and bland.

And, I decided, karma was not a jot different from the West’s guilty conscience. Tigers on the inside like tigers on the outside. Either will eat you alive.

We were joined by a spry elderly woman whose name seemed to be simply Lǎofùrén, which I was quite sure meant ‘old woman.’ Perhaps I heard wrong. She was a wise old crone who joined our conversation by saying, ‘Causes just causes, effects just effects. I hit this man,’ patting Huli’s cheek with her palm, ‘Why?’  She shrugged. ‘You know?’ looking at me. ‘You, blockhead?’ She laughed out loud. ‘Chumps,’ she said.

Or at least that was Huli’s translation. He poured tea, and after slurping her’s down, the woman said, ‘Then there’s Huang Po’s little tale. More confusion. Still a disciple of Huaihai, he was, Huang Po, pondering cause and effect, asked the Old Man, ‘So what happens to someone aware, prescient, knowing that cause has its effects, but also that the fox runs free?’

Huaihai gave the young monk a long look, then asked, ‘Is there such a person?’

But Huang Po answered, ‘And who might you be?’

Challenged, the Master leaned forward, ‘Ah, well, come here, come closer, and I will tell you.”

Huang Po, stepped closer, then quickly slapped the Master’s cheek.

Huaihai burst out laughing. “I have been nipped by a wild fox,’ he said.

Laughter all around. I thought I should add something to the conversation; so I told them a story I had heard when in Beijing. It came from China’s northern province of Gansu. A warlord held a town by mainforce. He built a wall around the town and his troops regularly patrolled the town’s perimeter for several miles beyond its walls. Those who objected were expelled. Foreigners were forbidden their language, their children taken from them and taught in schools set up by the warlord.

The man rode through his town and the surrounding countryside gloating and powerful. Most acquiesced, to survive. A few prayed for the end to this tyranny. Inevitably, his greed and gloating, caused a son to rebel. Faced with an insurrection, the tyrant gathered his troops. But there was no need for a battle. Drunk with fury and remorse, the tyrant died raging against the pain in his chest.

Huli pointed a finger at me. “Yes, indeed,” he said. “You want to be an outlaw, you gotta be honest. Otherwise,” and he ran his forefinger across his throat.

And Lǎofùrén said,  ‘That old fellow, that man who became a fox, he makes it plain enough: how you live, you pay.

Huli repeated the phrase, considering. Sounded like: Ee bow ee hawhy bow. 

She wagged a finger at us. "Man who do many bad deeds in this life might still live like emperor's eunuch; but karma still working. His time not yet come." She jabbed a finger into my chest. "See there, gwai-lou, everyone’s time will come."

Not falling, not darkening:

Two colors, one game.
Not darkening, not falling:

One thousand mistakes, ten thousand mistakes.

NOTES:
Pochang is alternate name for Baizhang Huaihai.
gwai-lou translates as ghost man-devil (鬼佬)
The ending quatrain is from Wumen Huikai (無門慧開, 1183–1260; Japanese name: Mumon Ekai) who was a Chinese Chan master during China‘s Song period. He is most famous for having compiled and commentated the 48-koan collection The Gateless Barrier (Mandarin: 無門關 Wúménguān; Japanese: 無門関 Mumonkan).

CONVERSATIONS 9

 ANCIENT REGULATIONS 

(Baizhang Huaihai 百丈懷海 720-814)

The copy of the Ancient Regulations that I had read before my little excursion to China seemed an odd business. For example, there was this:

At 3:00 A.M., which is the fifth watch of the night, when the abbot makes his rounds, burning incense through the aisles of the practice hall, the incense offering assistant reminds the abbot of the scheduled event once again, saying: Following the breakfast of rice gruel, the ascent to the Dharma Hall is scheduled, sir. If it is a guest master, the assistant instructs him to post in the practice hall a wooden tablet inscribed with the words “Ascent to the Dharma Hall.”

At breakfast, the practice hall director strikes the octagonal wooden post with its mallet to signal the moment when the first serving of rice gruel is completed, then immediately strikes it again and makes the following announcement: I announce to you, fellow practitioners, that when we hear the bell ring after breakfast, each of us, properly attired, will proceed to the Buddha Hall. Respectfully announced.

My guess is that the translator has embellished the simple list of guidelines into a flowery, figurative description of Huaihai’s list. Nothing I had read about Matsu’s favored disciple led me to believe that he would write such a document.

Imagining some dark morning in the rain, slurping shuifan, the characters 水 饭 clearly  giving the nature of this fine repast: water rice, head aching from an indifferent night of rest, the day ahead, programmed from dawn to dusk, the young monks must have risen reluctantly. Just 25 odd years separate Matsu’s temple and this place still under the thumb of Baizhang Huaihai; but the change here is as radical as the change in the country.

Between 750 and 820, China had six different emperors. The period began with a conflict brought on by the An Lushan Rebellion (755 - 763.) The Tang Dynasty went from a strong, centralized government to a much weakened fragmentary state. By 820, regional military governors began operating as autonomous warlords.

In 906, the Tang Dynasty fell under the weight of its own confusion. Five short-lived dynasties took control of the northern provinces, while ten separate kingdoms rose to rule the south. It wasn’t until 960, with the coup of Emperor Taizu and his successors, that unification began. The warlords were systematically conquered in the south; with the conquest of the Northern Han in 979, China was once again reunified.

As the country succumbed to rebellion and disorder after An Lushan, Chan monks, in the interest of self-preservation, began to organize and grow. The Ancient Regulations of Huaihai were a major step in the establishment of well run, orderly temples.

Matsu, as we have seen, was a dominant character who could control simply with his presence. Huaihai was not such a man. Though he has become recognized as a  major figure in the Zen lineage, this is largely a matter of the future bestowing honors on a past that does not warrant them: such is History. Chan, as an organization, needed legitimacy. Huaihai, the bureaucrat, the accountant, was able to give them an organization that allowed Chan Buddhism to grow and become an independent entity with its own temples, governed by strict rules and regulations.

Baizhang Huaihai

The Japanese masters to come adopted this format and Zen temples of the 21st century are run precisely like clockwork, with every eventuality accounted for. Even one’s time in the toilet is prescribed.

It all seemed a long way from the laissez faire of Matsu’s Youmin Temple in Nanchang.

Huli and I had arrived at the temple and were greeted respectfully, but warily. Everyone, it seemed, was elsewhere. The temple itself was scrupulously clean, but well used, and many of the buildings appeared in need of repair. The silence was disconcerting. Somewhere near were over 120 monks; but the only sign of them was a distant hum of chanting.

Huli had told me that Huaihai, in his heyday, had 80 or 90 personal disciples. We wandered the grounds, looked into the empty Dharma Hall, a gloomy room with sagging, scarred floors. Polished to a shine, these floors, but looking for all the world like a beautiful woman, powdered and perfumed, but obviously gone to seed with age and neglect.

We went back to the village and shared a rice bowl with the local carpenter and his family. No work at the temple, he told us. Sometime I fix this or that, gain merit for next life, laughing at the thought.

The abbot saw us in the late afternoon. An intelligent, well educated fellow, he obviously had a deep respect for his master Huaihai. When I asked about the status of Buddhism, he took some time with his answer. It wouldn’t do to be disrespectful to the emperor, Li Cul, best known for hosting extravagant palace feasts.

“We have struggled. It is as it has always been. This man and that man at odds with one another. This man says ‘black,’ that man says ‘white.” The abbot, whose name was Moyan (莫言) that translates literally to "don't speak", appropriately paused to bow his head in thought. He did so often, placing a crooked index finger beneath his nose.

Oddly, the lyrics of a Paul Simon song popped into my head: One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor. Way of the world.

“Monks were defrocked in the thousands,” Moyan said. “Many of those, of course, had no interest in the Dharma, but only in their rice bowl. However, we were diminished. That man ruled the land, and this man suffered. We were not permitted to preach in the cities and towns. And, in the last years of Hsuan tsung, those who wished to become monks were required to do so through the bureaucratic system that required purchasing a certificate. That man lined his pockets, while this man went hungry.”

A gong sounded, distant, muted. The abbot straightened his back and said, “I must go now.”

And so we, too, went.

Huli was quiet as we walked back to the village. Then he said, “Too much arm, too much hand, pushing tool against rock, not so good. Break tools, that will.” He gave a shake of his head. “Silly stuff,” he said. “Carve hard rock best with soft touch.”