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IDENTIFYING WITH CAUSE AND EFFECT

EVERY TIME BAIZHANG, Zen Master Dazhi, gave a dharma talk, an old man would come to listen. He usually left after the talk, but one day he remained behind. Baizhang asked, “Who is there?”

The man said, “I am not actually a human being. I lived and taught on this mountain at the time of Kashyapa Buddha. One day a student asked me, ‘Does a person who practices completely still fall into cause and effect?’ I said to him, ‘No, such a person does not fall into cause and effect.’ Because I said this, I was made to be reborn as a wild fox for five hundred lifetimes. Reverend master, please say a turning word for me and free me from this wild fox body.” Then he asked Baizhang, “Does a person who practices completely still fall into cause and effect?”

Baizhang said, “Do not ignore cause and effect.”

Immediately the man had great realization. Bowing, he said, “I am now liberated from the body of a wild fox. I will stay in the mountain behind the monastery. Master, could you perform the usual services for a deceased monk for me?”

Baizhang asked the practice coordinator to inform the assembly that a funeral service for a monk would be held after the midday meal. The monks asked each other, “What’s going on? Everyone is well; there is no one sick in the Nirvana Hall.”

After their meal, Baizhang led the assembly to a large rock behind the monastery and showed them a dead fox at the rock’s base. Following the customary procedure, they cremated the body.

That evening during his lecture in the dharma hall, Baizhang talked about what had happened that day.

Huangbo asked him, “A teacher of old gave a wrong answer and became a wild fox for five hundred lifetimes. What if he hadn’t given a wrong answer?”

Baizhang said, “Come closer and I will tell you.”

Huangbo went closer and slapped Baizhang’s face.

Laughing, Baizhang clapped his hands and said, “I thought it was only barbarians who had red beards. But you too have a red beard!”

This story is in the Tiansheng Extensive Record of the Lamp. Still, students do not understand the principle of causation and mistakenly deny cause and effect. What a pity! Things are deteriorating and the ancestral way has degenerated. Those who say does not fall into cause and effect deny causation, thereby falling into the lower realms. Those who say Do not ignore cause and effect clearly identify with cause and effect. When people hear about identifying with cause and effect, they are freed from the lower realms. Do not try to escape this. Do not doubt this. Many contemporaries who consider themselves students of Zen deny causation. How do we know? They confuse not ignore with not fall into. Thus, we know that they deny cause and effect.

Venerable Kumaralabdha, the Nineteenth Ancestor in India, said:

We see both wholesome and unwholesome results in the three periods. Ordinary folks deny cause and effect when they see kind, fair-minded people suffer and die young, while violent and unjust people prosper into old age. Such ordinary folks say that neither crimes nor beneficial acts bring consequences. They do not realize that the consequences of our actions follow us for one hundred, one thousand, or ten thousand eons.

We clearly know from this that Kumaralabdha does not deny cause and effect. But students today do not understand this. They do not revere or follow the ancient way. Calling themselves teachers of humans and devas, they are robbers of humans and devas—enemies of practitioners. Followers of the ancestral teaching should not instruct later generations to deny causation, because that is a crooked view, not the dharma of buddha ancestors. People fall into this crooked view because their studies are shallow.

Nowadays, monks in China say, “Those of us who have received human bodies and encountered buddha dharma don’t remember even one or two past lives, but the wild fox on Mount Baizhang remembered as many as five hundred past lives. He did not become a fox because of past actions. Stopped at the entrance door by a golden chain [trapped by a limited view of enlightenment], he was transmigrating only in the animal realm.” Many who are regarded as great teachers talk like this, but such a view is not acceptable among buddha ancestors.

In the realms of humans, foxes, and others, some may be born with the capacity to see past lives. Such a capacity may be the result of unwholesome action and not necessarily a seed of enlightenment. The World-Honored One has cautioned us in detail about such a point. Not to understand it reflects a lack of study. Regrettably, to know as many as one thousand or ten thousand lifetimes is not necessarily to understand buddha dharma. There are those outside the way who remember eighty thousand eons, but do not understand buddha dharma. Compared with such capacities, this fox who could recall five hundred lifetimes is not significant.

The most serious mistake made by those who study Zen in China is to believe that a person who practices completely does not fall into cause and effect. What a pity! There have been an increasing number of those who deny cause and effect, even though they witness the Tathagata’s true dharma being transmitted from ancestor to ancestor. So, those who study the way should urgently clarify this teaching. The point of Baizhang’s words Do not ignore cause and effect is that we should not be ignorant of causation.

Thus, the significance of practicing cause and realizing effect is clear. This is the way of buddhas and ancestors. Those who themselves have not yet clarified buddha dharma should not superficially explain it to humans and devas.

Ancestor Nagarjuna said, “If you deny cause and effect in the worldly realm, as some people outside the way do, you negate this present life as well as future lives. If you deny cause and effect in the realm of practice, you reject the three treasures, the four noble truths, and the four fruits of shravakas.”

Clearly know that those who deny cause and effect are outside the way, whether they are living a worldly or a renunciate life. They say that the present life is unreal and that their transient body is in this world, but that their true nature abides in enlightenment. They believe that their true nature is mind, and that mind and body are separate.

There are also those who say that people return to the ocean of true nature when they die. Without having studied buddha dharma, they say that transmigration through birth and death ends and there are no future births after they return to the ocean of enlightenment. Those who hold this view of annihilation are outside the way. They are not buddha’s disciples even if they look like monks. They are indeed outside the buddha dharma. Because they deny cause and effect, they deny present and future lives. They deny causation because they have not studied with true teachers. Those who have studied deeply with true teachers should abandon mistaken views which deny causation. Have faith in and pay respect to the compassionate teaching of Ancestor Nagarjuna.

Yongjia, Great Master Zhenjiao, Priest Xuanjiao, was a senior student of Huineng of Mount Caoxi, the Sixth Ancestor. He had initially been a student of the Lotus School on Mount Tiantai, and a dharma brother of Zuoxi Xianlang. While he was reading the Maha Pari-nirvana Sutra, a golden light filled the room and he awakened beyond birth and death. He went to Mount Caoxi to present his realization to Huineng, who gave him his seal of approval.

Yongjia later composed a verse called “The Song of Realizing the Way,” in which he wrote: “Carefree views of emptiness ignore cause and effect, and invite endless calamity.”

It is true that ignoring causation invites disaster. Past sages clarified cause and effect, but students have become confused in recent times. Those of you who have a pure aspiration for enlightenment and want to study buddha dharma for the sake of buddha dharma should clarify causation as past sages did. Those who reject this teaching are outside the way.

Hongzhi, Old Buddha, commented in a verse on the wild fox:

A foot of water has expanded to a wave ten feet tall.

Helplessly wandering through five hundred births,

the fox who struggles with not falling or not ignoring

remains entangled in twining vines.

Ha! Ha! Do you get it?

If you are not stuck,

you will let me continue my “goo goo wa wa.”

Shrine songs and dance emerge spontaneously

during clapping and cheering.

By the lines The fox who struggles with not falling or not ignoring remains entangled in twining vines, Hongzhi means that not falling is itself not ignoring.

This story of the fox is not complete. It says that the old man did become free from a wild fox’s body, but it does not say whether he was then born in the world of humans, devas, or elsewhere. This makes people wonder. If the old man is reborn in a wholesome realm, free from a wild fox’s body, it must be the realm of either devas or humans. Otherwise, he would be reborn in one of the four unwholesome realms. There is no shortage of locations for rebirth. But those outside the buddha way mistakenly believe that sentient beings return to the ocean of permanence or to the great self after death.

Keqin, Zen Master Yuanwu of Mount Jia, commented in verse on this ancient case:

A fish swims, making the water murky.

A bird flies, shedding its feathers.

The ultimate mirror is difficult to escape.

The great void is boundless.

Once you go, you go endlessly.

By virtue of causation, the one who practices completely

lives five hundred lifetimes.

Thunder cracks the mountains and storms shake the ocean.

The color of purified gold does not change.

This poem still has a view of a permanent self and a sense of denying cause and effect.

Zonggao, Zen Master Dahui, of Mount Jing, Hang Region, commented:

Not falling and not ignoring

are like a pebble and a lump of clay.

When they show up together on a footpath,

the silver mountain opens up.

Seeing it, the silly Priest Budai of Ming

claps his hands and bursts out laughing.

People in China nowadays regard Zonggao as an established ancestor. However, his view does not equal even the expedient teachings in the buddha dharma. It resembles a view of spontaneous enlightenment by people outside the way.

More than thirty masters have written poems or commentaries on this story. Not one of them understands the saying a person of complete practice does not fall into cause and effect as a denial of causation. What a pity! Such people waste their lives by not clarifying cause and effect. In studying buddha dharma you should first understand causation. By denying causation, you generate outrageously crooked views and cut off wholesome roots.

After all, causation is self-evident; there are no exceptions. Those who act in an unwholesome way decline, and those who act in a wholesome way thrive. There is not a hairbreadth of discrepancy. If cause and effect had been ignored or denied, buddhas would not have appeared and Bodhidharma would not have come from India; sentient beings would not have seen Buddha or heard the dharma. The principle of cause and effect is not clarified by Confucius or Laozi. Buddhas and ancestors alone have transmitted it. Students in these decadent times seldom meet a genuine teacher or hear the true dharma. That is why they do not clarify cause and effect.

If you deny causation, endless harm results. Even if you do nothing more than deny cause and effect, this is a disastrous, poisonous view. Immediately clarify all causes and all effects if you want to make the aspiration for enlightenment your priority, and so respond to the boundless gift of buddha ancestors.

During the summer practice period in the seventh year of the Kencho Era [1255], I copied Dogen’s draft. There may be a second or final version edited by him, but I have used his draft for the time being. Ejo.