In Dunhuang's Mogao Grottoes there is a fresco from the Northern Wei dynasty entitled "Giving His Body to Feed a Tiger." The story comes from the fourth volume of the Suvarnaprabhasa Sutra, which describes how Prince Sattva, a previous incarnation of Sakyamuni, was once out walking with the king and his two elder brothers when from the top of a cliff they looked down and saw a tigress with seven cubs lying weakly on the ground, on the point of starving to death. The prince gazed at the tigress for a while, then leapt down from the cliff and lay down in front of her. But the tigress did not react at all to his kindhearted action, and believing she was too weak to eat him, the prince used a sharp piece of bamboo to cut his own throat. Before he died, the young prince said: "The body is no more than a bag of excrement, and is of no use at all to one in life. Now I will use my flesh for a worthwhile purpose, and thus it will become a boat for me to cross the great sea between life and death."

Professor of aesthetics Chang Hsun, in his book A Contemplation on Chinese Art, explains that the prince's compassionate gift of his body to feed the tigress places humans, tigers and all living beings on an equal footing, for humans are no different from other living beings in facing inevitable death. The young prince used this most tragic method to directly illustrate how little separates life and death. In this way, in the midst of great sorrow and pain, he wished to awaken people to the emptiness and disillusionment of existence.

In fact the story shows that Buddhism makes no distinction between the basic nature of humans and animals. There is no difference between humans and animals in their pursuit of desires, their misery and their self-centeredness, and therefore humans should extend their compassion to animals. Of course this is no easy matter, and only a Buddha could give up his own life to save a tiger's.

From this Point of view, in the past, whether it was Wu Sung killing a tiger or Chinese people using tiger organs to treat diseases, or, as described in Chapter 13 of Wu Cheng-en's Journey to the West, a mountain hunter armed with two pitchforks fighting with a mountain tiger to save the monk Tang San-tsang, these were all actions forced upon living beings who preferred life over death.

Especially when man still lived in the forests, people were in constant danger from tigers and had no option but to choose between their own life or another. "The ferocious tiger is hidden deep in the mountains/His long roar whips up the wind/They say the traveler walks in joy/But he walks in fear of death." "The tigers of the northern mountains have caves/The tigers of the southern mountains are many/Their gaze like lightning and their voice like thunder/They live wherever the mountains rise/ They eat a hundred yet leave no bones/The sound of the woodcutter is gone from the valley/No walker raises dust on the long road..." In such circumstances, for Wu Sung to kill the tiger for his own protection really was the most natural thing in the world.

But people's later struggles with the tiger have no longer been to protect themselves from ferocious maneaters. For instance, when an international conservation groups uses a 10-year-old film showing Taiwanese killing a tiger to accuse Taiwan today of being a black hole for wildlife, though we can question the group's methods we cannot deny that the tiger in the film was killed purely for show, to drum up customers for an auction of its body parts. How can this be compared with the daring of someone in ancient times defeating a tiger barehanded?

If the modern Wu Sung lets the tiger go free, it is not merely to conform to the letter of an international convention, but because today, when science and technology have allowed human populations to soar, the natural world is easily crushed by mankind, and the tiger's very existence has become precarious. If we fight the tiger now, ours will be the hollowest of victories.

Whether or not the theater group's new version can bring the old Wu Sung's life into line with changing times and attitudes, in an era when humans no longer need to struggle constantly with nature merely to survive, will the modern Wu Sung occasionally cherish an age when for his own survival and honor, he battled barehanded with the tiger--an age of valor?

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To impart conservation ideas, in Taiwan University's Se Den Society's New Wu Sung, Wu Sung departs from his image of a tiger-slaying hero, and instead lets the tiger go. (photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang)