Shifting Shape, Shaping Text: Philosophy and Folklore in the Fox Koan

Preface

Preface It takes a fox to know a fox. —Ts’ung-jung lu, case 24 This book draws on my fascination with the complex varieties and multiple meanings of the shape-shifting wild fox—a symbol of liminality in East Asian folklore—in order to analyze the theory and practice of Ch’an/Zen Buddhism in its formative period in China and Japan . The book develops a wide range of implications about early Zen by examining a specific example of the kòan tradition known as “Pai-chang (J. Hyakujò) and the wild fox” or “Pai-chang’s wild fox kòan,” which is included as the second case in the Wu-men kuan and numerous other collections . While most interpretations comment on the philosophy of causality, my aim is to show how the fox kòan deals with the doctrine of karma in terms of a generally overlooked folklore narrative of fox-spirit possession and exorcism borrowed from Buddhist morality tale literature (often labeled setsuwa bungaku). The kòan thus serves as a lens for examining the intersection in Zen of philosophical discussions on cause-and-effect and popular religious approaches to karmic retribution and release. The relation between these interlocking discursive perspectives is discussed in light of the image of Master Pai-chang as a strict disciplinarian who advocates an ethic of “no work, no food”—an ethic reflected in his monastic rules text, the Ch’an-men kuei-shih (J. Zenmon vii kishiki), which also stresses the need to banish rogue or miscreant members of the saºgha. Thus the book deals with the relation between a triad of issues: a philosophical debate about the paradoxical identity of causality and its antithesis noncausality; a folkloric expression of retribution and repentance conveyed by the kòan’s exorcism narrative; and Pai-chang’s monastic rules and recorded sayings texts. The book demonstrates that Pai-chang’s rules and records articulate a sense of monastic order and moral stability that combats the criticism of Buddhism as an antinomian, antisocial, “wild fox” religious lifestyle in a way that dovetails with the ritual elimination of an intruding vulpine spirit that is performed in the kòan record. Chapter 1 introduces the text and context of the fox kòan and evaluates Zen’s ambiguous (or duplicitous) attitude about supernatural beliefs and diverse uses of the rhetoric of the wild fox—either as a criticism of rogue monks who violate rules or as praise of morally superior patriarchs who transcend the need for regulations. This chapter analyzes various kinds of syncretism incorporating indigenous fox-cult worship that encompasses the poles of the fox portrayed as positive/protective and as negative/destructive —even while Zen rhetoric cloaks itself in an aura of iconoclastic repudiation of animism. Chapter 2 explores the methodological issue of examining the connection between philosophy and folklore while attempting to overcome the conventional two-tiered model of great and little traditions. The underlying theme in the examination of ambivalent approaches to the fundamentally bivalent vulpine imagery in Part One is that fox transfiguration represents the crossing of boundaries and the possibility of conquering illusion during times of transition and transformation —especially in moral crises when conventional reality is challenged , undermined, or otherwise called into question. Throughout the book there are citations of literary and artistic expressions of fox folklore in relation to Zen thought. In Part Two, Chapter 3 focuses on philosophical interpretations of the doctrine of causality and explores the debate between a literal reading of the kòan, which emphasizes a strict adherence to the law of karma, and the mainstream paradoxical reading, which embraces an identity of causality and noncausality. Chapter 4 deals extensively with the contradictory interpretations of the fox kòan presented in two fascicles of Dògen’s Shòbògenzò and related writings. It also considers the controversy in contemporary scholarship, particularly Critical Buddhism, about whether it is possible to appropriate Dògen’s apparent change of viii • Preface heart—expressed in an exclusive emphasis on the literal reading of the kòan in his later period—to illumine socioethical problems in Buddhism ’s interaction with modern society. Chapter 5, citing examples of fox folklore from a variety of setsuwa sources, shows that one must understand how folklore motifs provide a literary and conceptual underpinning of the fox kòan’s approach to the experience of repentance if one is to...