Hyakujo’s Fox | Ango Opening Ceremony 2025

Well, here we are—the opening of Ango.
Ango is a really exciting time. It’s a good time to suspend our disbelief.

We have a hard time, sometimes, seeing just how clearly we’ve prejudged our lives—prejudged our karmic trajectory. Each of you—and I’ve counted—each of you has at least one million reasons why you can’t be here, why you shouldn’tbe doing this. And yet, you’re here.

So it’s good to use Ango, and this retreat in particular, as a great reset—a way of realizing what’s possible when you step outside your karmic conditioning.

Something as simple as turning out for meditation at 6 a.m.—even once—can change your life. It will change your life. All you have to do is do it once to prove me wrong. But sometimes, we can’t.

We feel like we can’t.
And then the question comes: why?

We get very hung up in the epic story we call our life. We rehearse it, polish it, defend it—but very seldom do we actually come home to it. Coming home means letting go of the story long enough to meet things as they are.

I often say this: the gap between things as they are and things as I expect them to be is exactly where suffering forms. Big gap, big suffering. Small gap, small suffering. No gap—no suffering.

There’s a case in the Mumonkan, the second case, that brings us face to face with that gap, and with the way we use our causes and conditions to keep ourselves trapped—to reinforce or even excuse our story.

It’s called Hyakujo’s Fox.

Whenever Master Hyakujo delivered a sermon, an old man was always there listening with the monks. When they left, he left too. One day, however, he remained behind. The master asked him, “What man are you, standing in front of me?”

The old man replied, “Indeed, I am not a man. In the past, in the time of Kashapa Buddha, I lived on this mountain as a Zen priest. On one occasion, a monk asked me, ‘Does a perfectly enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect or not?’ I answered, ‘He does not.’ And because of that answer, I fell into the life of a fox for 500 iterations.

Now I beg you, Master—please say a turning word so I can be released from this body of a fox.”

Then he asked, “Does a perfectly enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect or not?”

The Master answered, “The law of cause and effect cannot be obscured.”

Upon hearing this, the old man immediately became deeply enlightened. Making his bows, he said, “I have now been released from the body of a fox, and I’ll be behind the mountain. I’m going to dare to make an additional request: Master, could you please perform my funeral as you would for a deceased priest?”

The Master had the eno strike the anvil with a gavel and announce to the monks that after the meal, there would be a funeral service for a deceased priest.

The monks wondered, “Isn’t everybody healthy? Everyone’s here. I don’t think there’s anyone sick in the infirmary. What could this possibly be about?”

After the meal, the Master led the monks to the foot of a rock behind the mountain, and with his staff, he poked out the dead body of a fox. He then performed the ceremony of cremation.

That evening, the Master centered the rostrum in the hall and told the monks the whole story. Obaku, one of Hyakujo’s disciples, asked, “The old man missed a turning word and fell into the state of a fox for 500 lives. Suppose every time he answered, he made no mistakes—what would happen then?”

The Master said, “Come over here and I’ll tell you.”

So Obaku drew close and slapped the Master.

The Master clapped his hands, laughing aloud, and said, “I thought the barbarian’s beard was red, but here’s a barbarian with a red beard!”

A lot going on, yeah? A lot going on.
Our lives are a lot like that, aren’t they? A lot of stories, a lot of pleading for circumstances to be different, a lot of hopes for what this practice is going to bring.

Hyakujo Ekai was one of the great masters of the Tang Dynasty, remembered as a pivotal figure in shaping the Zen monastic tradition. He established the first comprehensive set of regulations that gave structure to the rhythm of zazen, work, and ritual life.

To a large extent, when we follow our pattern during sesshin, we’re walking right in Hyakujo’s footsteps.

He had a famous saying: A day without work is a day without food. He continued to labor in the fields even in old age. He wanted to embody that principle. His teaching style was vigorous, direct, and often expressed paradox through sudden action—just as we see here.

We all get hung up on our epic story of cause and effect. We call it karma, sometimes fate, sometimes destiny. Sometimes we use it to explain why life is the way it is. Sometimes we use it to excuse ourselves from responsibility.

But either approach misses the mark.

The old priest said, “An enlightened person does not fall under cause and effect.” He imagined awakening as some kind of escape hatch—as if enlightenment meant being above karma. And for that mistake, he lived 500 lives as a fox—cunning, elusive, always on the edge of human existence, trying to avoid the things that trap us in human form.

Isn’t that what we do when we try to dodge our own circumstances? We end up outwitting ourselves—cheating ourselves out of our true home, our original nature.

When Hyakujo replies, “The law of cause and effect cannot be obscured,” what he’s really saying is: you can argue with it, deny it, theologize it—but ultimately, you can’t escape it. The very moment you act, a consequence follows.

That’s not a curse—unless, of course, you’re acting on what you wish was here, instead of what is here. If you act on what’s actually here, that’s liberation.

Enlightenment doesn’t lift you out of this; it drives you into this—into the challenges your life brings, the misfortunes you’d rather avoid.

The gap between expectation and reality is where suffering grows.

When we meet things as they are, cause and effect stop being conceptual. They become the living fabric our lives are woven into.

The old man was freed, not because he escaped karma, but because he saw through the story. Cause and effect aren’t punishment—they’re the creative pulse of living itself. Each breath, each step, each choice—this is karma as living creativity, not binding chain.

When you forget the idea of cause and effect and just work skillfully with what’s here—there’s your liberation.

That slap from Obaku isn’t violence; it’s intimacy. It reveals the truth prior to words and concepts—prior to our ideas about what should be.

Hyakujo said, “Come near and I’ll tell you,” inviting him to experience what’s beyond explanation.

Obaku stepped into that living moment and delivered the remedy required to snap both of them out of the conceptual trap. Hyakujo’s laughter shows that the Dharma isn’t bound in clever answers—it’s a direct, unhesitating response.

Freedom isn’t elsewhere. It’s here.
The way to freedom is to master your present circumstances—not by controlling them, but by meeting them fully and creatively.

When you do, karma ceases to be static and becomes luminous—alive and free.
And there’s always a Dharma gate to open.

Mumon’s commentary says:

“Not falling under the law of cause and effect—why did he fall into the state of a fox?
The law of cause and effect cannot be obscured—why was he released from the fox’s body?
If you have the one eye, you’ll understand that Hyakujo enjoyed 500 lives of grace as a fox.”

Mumon presses both sides. If you say the enlightened one doesn’t fall under cause and effect, why did he fall? But if you say the law cannot be obscured, why was he released?

He’s pushing beyond neat answers. He wants you to see both sides and not be caught by either.

This “one eye” sees beyond yes and no, beyond falling or not falling, beyond karma as ledger.

With this eye, 500 lives as a fox aren’t punishment—they’re grace.

Just like the circumstances we want to escape, each has the power to transform us if we work with them skillfully. Even in a fox’s body, even in 500 lives of wandering—it’s still the field of practice. There’s no outside to the Dharma.

Priest, fox, mayor, mother—it doesn’t matter.
Each life unfolds through cause and effect.
Awakening is nothing apart from that.

Mumon’s capping verse says:

“Not falling, not obscuring—two faces, one die.
Not obscuring, not falling—a thousand mistakes, ten thousand mistakes.”

Falling under cause and effect and not falling are two faces of one coin. It’s not about choosing the right side.

This very life is that coin.
When we hold to one side and reject the other, now we have heaven and hell.

To say “cause and effect bind me”—that’s one mistake.
To say “cause and effect don’t touch me”—that’s another.
To cling to either is to miss the living point.

You don’t need to pick a side. You don’t need to settle for half the coin.
Not falling, not obscuring—the whole die is right here.

Each breath, each action, each circumstance is already complete.

The invitation is not to avoid mistakes, but to see through them. Every mistake, every slip into fox life, is also Buddha life.

A thousand mistakes, ten thousand mistakes—and still, here we are, whole and awake, sitting here, listening patiently.

So what do we do with this?

We stop waiting for freedom and take up our life as it is, recognizing the freedom already here.

We don’t outwit karma or excuse ourselves from responsibility. We notice the gap between expectation and reality and step into it—with both feet.

We re-knit the fabric that’s been torn.
That’s the turning word: to work skillfully with our circumstances, to know and own our biases, to bring everything—especially what we’d rather not see—into conscious awareness.

And learning to master that allows us to stand right where we are, not divided.

Fold the laundry.
Wash the bowl.
Rake the leaves.
Do the thing you’ve been avoiding.
Wake up at crazy hours and sit in silence.

This is not falling, not obscuring.
This is the whole die.

Every action is the Dharma in motion.
Every moment is a chance to be awake.