From Sanskrit Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika to Chinese Wild Fox Koan
There was recently a discussion about how to interpret or understand a koan. I want to show that an isolated koan is often unsolvable if we do not know the context within Buddhist philosophy.
>स्कन्धान् यद्यनुपादाय भवेत्कश्चित्तथागतः। स इदानीमुपादद्यादुपादाय ततो भवेत्॥
>If there were to be a tathagata because of non-grasping on to the aggregates, he should still depend upon them in the present. As such he will be dependent.
Nagarjuna
David J. Kalupahana comment:
In the early discourses, a person in bondage and therefore in a state of suffering is explained in terms of grasping at the five aggregates. A person who is freed is said to be without grasping, but not without the aggregates. The gerund 'upadaya' was used in the discourses to express two different meanings, namely clinging to and depending upon. It was only in the former sense that a person was said to be freed from the aggregates, not in the latter sense.
Koan:
When Chan Master Baizhang Huaihai delivered a certain series of sermons, an old man always followed the monks to the main hall and listened to him.
When the monks left the hall, the old man would also leave.
One day, however, he remained behind, and Baizhang asked him, "Who are you, standing here before me?"
The old man replied.
"I am not a human being.
In the old days of Kashyapa Buddha, I was a head monk, living here on this mountain.
One day a student asked me, 'Does a man of enlightenment fall under the yoke of causation or not?
I answered, 'No, he does not.'
Since then I have been doomed to undergo five hundred rebirths as a fox.
I beg you now to give the turning word to release me from my life as a fox.
Tell me, does a man of enlightenment fall under the yoke of causation or not?"
Baizhang Huaihai answered, "He does not ignore causation."
No sooner had the old man heard these words than he was enlightened.
Making his bows, he said, "I am emancipated from my life as a fox. I shall remain on this mountain.
I have a favor to ask of you: would you please bury my body as that of a dead monk."
So the man turned into a wild fox because he didn't study Buddhism :))
Nagarjuna's verse is from Nagarjuna: The Philosophy of the Middle Way, author David J. Kalupahana
Koan is from The Gateless Gate, transl. Katsuki Sekida