A. The man said, “I am not actually a human being. I lived and taught on this mountain at the time of Kashyapa Buddha. One day a student asked me, ‘Does a person who practises with great devotion still fall into cause and effect?’ I said to him, ‘No, such a person doesn’t.’ Because I said this I was reborn as a wild fox for five hundred lifetimes. Sir, please tell me the correct answer and free me from this wild fox’s body.”
Then he asked the master, “Does a person who practises with great devotion still fall into cause and effect?”
The master said, “He isn’t deluded by cause and effect.”
Immediately the man had great realisation.
Student: “What answer would you have made if you had been in his shoes?”
Master: “I would have said, ‘Such a man doesn’t fall into cause and effect’.”
Student: “Why on earth do you copy the wrong answer?”
Master: “Because of cause and effect.”
Student: “What would the old man have become if he had given a correct answer?”
Master: “A fox.”
Student: “Why would he have become a fox if he had given a correct answer?”
Master: “Because of cause and effect.”
Commentary:
Everything is the gate to the enlightenment.
When you know clearly what cause and effect is,
it is also the gate to the enlightenment.
When you don’t know what it is,
it is a trap that turns you into a fox.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
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