Hyakujos Fox Zen Story
- Dec 11, 2025
- 3 min read
Today we enter… Hyakujo’s Fox. A story with teeth in the dark. A story that refuses to stay on the surface. A story that asks:
What happens when understanding is almost right… but not true?
Let’s step in — slowly, bravely.
Let the Story Unfold
Whenever Zen Master Hyakujo delivered a talk, an old man came to listen. He stayed at the back, silent, unnoticed.
One day, after the others left, he approached Hyakujo.
He said:
Long ago, in the time of Kashapa Buddha, I lived as a Zen master on this mountain. A monk asked me:
Does an enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect?
I replied:
He does not.
Because of that answer, I fell into the body of a fox for five hundred lives.
Master, please… give me the right turning word.
Hyakujo said:
He does not escape cause and effect.
At these words, the old man awakened.
He bowed, saying:
I am free.
He then told Hyakujo:
Bury me as you would a monk.
That evening Hyakujo announced to the monks:
Tomorrow we will conduct a funeral for a fox.
No one understood.
After the meal, Hyakujo led them behind the hall. There, among the rocks, lay the body of a wild fox.
They performed the rites in silence.
Sit With the Meaning
This story cuts in two directions at once.
The old master’s mistake was subtle: Not a rejection of karma but a misunderstanding of freedom.
He thought enlightenment meant exemption from the laws that shape all beings.
But Zen is mercilessly clear:
Freedom is not escape. Freedom is intimacy.
To be enlightened is not to stand outside cause and effect but to stand so wholly within it that nothing binds you.
A fox is a symbol of being trapped in your own cleverness, lost in almost-wisdom, caught by a thought that looks true but isn’t.
His liberation came only when Hyakujo gave the correction:
He does not escape cause and effect.
Meaning:
He is not pushed around by it.
He is not victim to it.
He is not confused by it.
But he does not step outside the world.
True awakening doesn’t excuse you from living. It lets you live without distortion.
It is frightening, in its honesty.
Turn Inward With Your Parts
Is there a part of you that secretly longs to be free from consequences, responsibility, or reality?
What happens inside when you imagine that true freedom might mean greater intimacy with life, not less?
Do you sense a protector who wants spiritual wisdom to be an escape hatch?
Is there a younger part afraid that being fully in life means being swallowed by it?
Let Expression Rise
Choose what feels open:
IFS Journaling
Write from the part that wants to transcend the mess, the past, or the consequences.
Ask it gently: What are you afraid will happen if you stay fully in your life?
IFS Parts Art
Draw the fox. Not literally — draw what the fox represents in your system.What almost-true belief keeps looping inside you?
Somatic IFS
Place a hand on your belly.
Breathe in with the sense: I am here.
Breathe out with the sense: do not need to escape life to be free.
Notice what shifts.
And if none of these feel right… simply sit with the story. Let the silence do the teaching.
Stay here with your parts as long as you like, and we’ll meet again in the next story.
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