Past Life Story

You were a nine-tailed fox, born of legend. The nine-tailed fox is the strongest, deepest, and most lonely of foxes. After a thousand years of cultivation, an ordinary fox grows nine tails. The nine-tailed fox is no longer a fox. It is a divine being. Your first life began as an ordinary fox. In a small mountain valley you were born, and you lived an ordinary fox's life. Yet there was something different in you. With every shedding of skin, your soul grew deeper. With every season, your eyes saw further. In your hundredth year, you grew your second tail. The two-tailed fox was already not ordinary. The villagers feared you. But you did not harm them. You only walked the mountain in silence. To grow more deep was your way. In your three hundredth year, you grew your third tail. The three-tailed fox could change its form. You came to know the work of becoming a person. Yet you did not freely use that work. You wished to live silently as a fox. In your five hundredth year, you encountered a person for the first time. A wandering Taoist had come up the mountain. He saw you, and he bowed. "Old fox, you are nearing the path." You spoke for the first time. "What is the path?" The Taoist answered. "It is to know that life and death are one." You spent five hundred years understanding those words. In your seven hundredth year, you grew your seventh tail. By now you were almost a divine being. Yet there was a great trial. Loneliness. Among the gumiho, there is none other than yourself. You walked your path alone. The path was hard. In your eighth hundredth year, you fell into love for the first time. With a man. He was a young scholar who had come up the mountain. You changed into the form of a beautiful woman and approached him. He fell in love with you. You also loved him. Yet you knew. The man was a man, you were a fox. The two could not become one. After spending two seasons together, you sent him on his way. He never came back. In your nine hundredth year, you grew your eighth tail. With one tail remaining, you would become a divine being. Yet you faltered. To become a divine being, one must surrender all. To surrender even the love of a person. To surrender even the loneliness of a fox. You did not know if you could do this. In your nine hundredth and ninetieth year, your time approached. You climbed to the mountain peak. There you sat alone. The wandering Taoist appeared. He had become an old man. He gave you the final teaching. "Loneliness is also part of you. To accept loneliness is the way." You opened your eyes. Your ninth tail had grown. You were now a gumiho. A divine being. Yet you did not stay in that place. You went down the mountain to find people. Not to harm them—to give them the wisdom you had cultivated. From village to village, you traveled. To those who were lonely, you spoke. "Loneliness is also a part of you. Accept it." Many were healed by your words. In your two thousandth year, you ascended to heaven. You took a thousand years to become a fox, took another thousand to become a person, and took yet another thousand to become a divine being. The gumiho's thousand years of practice—that was your endless cultivation. You were lonely, but in that loneliness you grew. To grow was your destiny. Your soul, even now somewhere in some land, may still be cultivating. With each ordeal, growing deeper. If sometime in your life a thousand-year-deep wisdom comes to you—that, perhaps, may be the consciousness of an old gumiho living within you.