Friday Night Poetry Slam

Good morning R/Zen.

As I said last week, I invite you to respond to the Wumenguan with your own poetic reflections in the tradition of shi poetry, or linked verse. I’m hoping that the series is a way to help study the Wumenguan, a collection of Zen cases from the T’ang Dyanasty, still used as brick bats to open up Zen students to their essential nature.

Today’s slam takes up the second case of the Wumenguan in our study series, dealing with the pesky karmic existence of your hands and feet. After the gush of realization and enlightenment from Case 1, we are then thrown back to earth. What a pity! As last week, I’ll include the case, not the comment, Wumen’s verse, and then spit out something myself, for which I apologize.

CASE 2 Baizhang’s Fox

Once, when Baizhang gave a series of talks, a certain old man was always there listening together with the monks. When they left, he would leave too. One day, however, he remained behind. Baizhang asked him, “Who are you, standing here before me?”

The old man replied, “I am not a human being. In the far distant past, in the time of Kashyapa Buddha, I was head priest at this mountain. One day a monk asked me, ‘Does an enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect or not?’ I replied, ‘Such a person does not fall under the law of cause and effect.’ With this I was reborn five hundred times as a fox. Please say a turning word for me and release me from the body of a fox.”

He then asked Baizhang, “Does an enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect, or not?” Baizhang answered, “Such a person does not evade the law of cause and effect.”

Hearing this the old man immediately was enlightened. Making his bows he said, “I am released from the body of a fox. The body is on the other side of this mountain. I wish to make a request of you. Please, Abbott, perform my funeral as for a priest.”

Baizhang had the head monk strike the signal board and inform the assembly that after the noon meal there would be a funeral service for a priest. The monks talked about this in wonder. “All of us are well. There is no one in the morgue. What does the teacher mean?”

After the meal, Baizhang led the monks to the foot of a rock on the far side of the mountain. And there, with his staff, he poked out the dead body of a fox. He then performed the ceremony of cremation. That evening he took the high seat before his assembly and told the monks the whole story.

Huangbo stepped forward and said, “As you say, this old man missed the turning word and was reborn as a fox five hundred times. What if he had given the right answer each time he was asked the question--what would have happened then?”

Baizhang replied, “Just step up here closer, and I’ll tell you.” Huangbo went up to Baizhang and slapped him in the face.

Baizhang clapped his hands and laughed, saying, “I thought the Barbarian had a red beard, but here is a red bearded Barbarian!”

​

Wumen’s Verse:

Not falling, not evading—

two faces of the same die,

Not evading, not falling—

a thousand mistakes, ten thousand mistakes.

​

BigSky’s Verse:

Even though the skies are open,

And you wander through birth and death,

The wailing of a baby awakens mother and father,

The coughing of a parent calls forth a single hand.

Will you say then that heaven has closed its gates?

Or that they were always open from the start?

Oh, fox - will there be no end to your meandering?

How lucky, how wonderful it must be for you,

Lotus here and blossom there – oh! heavens!

Yet, life after life, there he is, lying in wait,

In the shadows, with a fine set of teeth -

Picking up your leavings and your waste.

Submitted May 13, 2023 at 03:11AM by bigSky001 https://ift.tt/myAQlxs