Wild Fox Zen
This morning in the woods I caught Bodhi’s tail in a shot unexpectedly and thought of one of my favorite and bedeviling koans, Gateless Gate # 38: Wu-tsu’s Bffalo Passes Through the Window.
Later on, with the winter approaching and the daylight shrinking, I turned to savoring some old Dogen poems. I stumbled on Dogen also chewing on this wonderful tail.
So first the koan with verse and then Steven Heine’s translation from A Blade of Grass (apparently out of print):
Wu-tsu said, “It is like a buffalo that passes through a latticed window. Its head, horns, and four legs all pass through. Why can’t its tail pass through as well?”
Verse:
Passing through, falling in a ditch;0
turning beyond, all is lost.
This tiny litle tail –
what a wonderful thing it is!
Passing through, falling in a ditch;0
turning beyond, all is lost.
This tiny litle tail –
what a wonderful thing it is!
The world —
Like a [buffalo’s] tail
Not passing through the window,
Although no one is there
Holding it back.
No one holding back and yet something always left out. What could it be?
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