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

2. The Kōan’s Multivalent Discursive Structure

2 • The Kòan’s Multivalent Discursive Structure Behind the thin animal disguise, it is universal human frailty and folly that is displayed before us. —D. D. R. Owen, on Roman de Renart The Kòan’s Multivalent Discursive Structure Shape-Shifting Since its initial publication in the early eleventh century, the fox kòan has inspired diverse and competing interpretations about its ambiguous message concerning the meaning of causality—a message expressed in the highly suggestive symbolism of a folklore narrative. A leading commentator from the Yüan era, Chung-feng Ming-pen (J. Chûhò Myòhon)—known for providing the classic definition of kòans as “magistrate or public (C. kung; J. kò) records (C. an; J. an)” emulating legal cases argued before a bench—has said that after twenty years of study the fox kòan remained for him an impenetrable mystery.1 He considered it one of the most disturbing yet potentially rewarding cases for Zen disciples and thought it should be utilized as a pedagogical tool with utmost care and respect. Furthermore, the fox kòan, discussed in numerous commentaries in China and Japan, was ranked in Hakuin’s Tokugawa-era system as a nantò kòan: a case that is “difficult to pass through” but has the potential to enhance “postenlightenment cultivation” or “realization beyond realization” (shòtaichòyò).2 Chung-feng’s comment stressing the sense of conundrum created by contemplating the fox kòan from an experiential standpoint shows that the case has been seen as especially perplexing within the orthodox tradition that employs it as a method for seeking or expressing enlightenment. 41 This view is supported by the Wu-men kuan paradoxical commentary that defies a literal reading, by Dògen’s conflicting interpretations, one endorsing the Wu-men kuan view and the other rejecting it, and by Hakuin’s ranking the case in the highest category of difficulty. But the kòan is also an extremely challenging text to interpret from the standpoint of contemporary contextual studies that approach it by combining a hermeneutics of traditional sources with an interdisciplinary approach to humanistic and social scientific methodologies, including philosophy, literary criticism, social history, and folklore studies. The kòan, including the source narrative and voluminous commentaries, is difficult to decipher because it weaves together two seemingly diametrically opposed viewpoints: demythology and mythology. Overcoming the Two-Tiered Model How is the appearance of the wild fox and the supernaturalism it evokes related to the philosophical commentaries on causality that distance themselves from, if not altogether scorn, the supernatural? To quote Aron Gurevich’s study of the relation between elite/scholastic and popular /syncretic religiosity in medieval Christianity: “How can these levels combine and penetrate each other within a single mind? What transformations do they suffer in this confluence?”3 Are the philosophical and supernatural implications complementary or contradictory modes of discourse? Or must we abandon the opposition between a philosophical reading and a folklore reading? Perhaps we must, as Pierre Bourdieu suggests in a somewhat parallel context, “undertake a simultaneously . . . dual reading of writings which are defined by their fundamental ambiguity, that is, by their reference to two social spaces, which correspond to two mental spaces.”4 In dealing with this issue we need to consider, as Judith Zeitlin suggests , that in East Asia ghosts and spirits “can be accepted as both psychologically induced and materially present,” so that what is anomalous or strange is “paradoxically affirmed and denied at the same time.”5 This comment recalls Gurevich’s argument that medieval European religion is “both-wordly” in encompassing otherworldly phenomena operating in a this-worldly environment.6 Because of the multidimensional symbolism of the fox, it is possible to develop interpretations of the kòan narrative along several lines. The kòan may express the positive side of a bodhisattva ’s choice to make a theriomorphic appearance as a pedagogical means, 42 • Shape-Shifting for example, or it can symbolize the negative image of an exorcism of the old monk’s spirit possession as applied by the current Pai-chang. Another reading is that the narrative depicts an interior dialogue between the attached and awakened sides of one person, Pai-chang, who in struggling to understand the relation between karma and transcendence projects his inner turmoil, as in a dream or fantasy, onto the envisioned fei-jen. The basic hermeneutic dilemma is whether the fox should...