What This Concept Is Saying
野干 is the Chinese translation of the Sanskrit śṛgāla, originally referring to an animal of the jackal type (i.e., jackal, often rendered in Chinese as 豺, a wild canid, distinct from the fox). Its call has several distinctive features: it is scattered and disordered, it sounds in the middle of the night, it is heard in desolate places, and nothing meaningful is conveyed to the listener. In Chinese Buddhist texts such as the *Dīrghāgama-sūtra* (《长阿含经》) and the *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra* (《大智度论》 T1509), 野干鳴 ("the wild jackal's howl") was codified as a rhetorical metaphor—comparing such a call to those "heretical views and deluded words" that sound lively yet contain nothing, and lead people into confusion.
The metaphor works by virtue of multiple structural correspondences:
- Sound without substance, noise without meaning. The jackal's cry cannot point to food, cannot warn of danger, cannot convey any useful information. Heretical views and deluded speech likewise appear to be eloquent, yet in fact do not point to reality, do not lead toward liberation, and do not resolve real problems. - Wrong time and wrong place; nothing to be gained from the "reasoning." The jackal typically howls in the deep night in the wilderness—both the time and the place are the opposite of "light." Heretical views likewise tend to arise "where there is no one who understands principle"—in places where the mind is dark and consciousness is disordered. - Disorderly and without sequence, leading people astray. The jackal's cry rises and falls erratically; the longer one listens, the more it unsettles and disturbs the mind. Deluded speech likewise hooks people with emotional appeals—before one sentence has been digested, the next arrives, and thinking can find no ground to take root. - Its very nature is agitation. The jackal cannot truly be silent—it *must* cry; crying is one of its modes of survival. People who speak deluded words likewise maintain their "sense of existence" by continuously producing language; the moment they stop talking, they feel empty.
In the *Mahāprajñāpāramitā-śāstra*, when discussing "the Śākya Lion" (釋迦師子, one of the epithets of Śākyamuni), the text sets 師子吼 (siṃha-nāda, "lion's roar") against 野干鳴 ("jackal's howl"), forming a subtle yet important contrastive thread running through the scriptures: the words of awakening are like the lion's roar—majestic in sound and upright in substance, causing all heterodox views to tremble; the words of the unawakened are like the jackal's howl—lively on first hearing, wholly empty upon close examination. This pairing is not a simple "good words / bad words" dichotomy; rather, it places before the listener the question of whether the speech in question carries any real weight.
Thus "野干鳴" is not an isolated adjective. It stands as the opposite of the Buddhist cultivation of 正語 (satya-vāc, "right speech"): right speech is rooted in reality, animated by compassion, and aimed at benefit; the jackal's howl has none of the three—it is neither true, nor kind, nor beneficial. The concept repeatedly reminds the listener of a plain question: Where does what you are hearing lead you?
Walking Through It in Everyday Life
We need not go to a monastery, nor read the texts of non-Buddhist schools. The ears of contemporary people are surrounded by jackal-cries almost every day. Below, the metaphor is walked through one by one according to the four characteristics given in the classical definition.
Category One: short videos, podcasts, and gossip accounts on the commute. The dominant nature of this kind of content is disorderly and continuously outputting. Today a celebrity scandal, tomorrow a plot-twist news item, the day after a "paradigm-shifting insight"—they do not point to real knowledge, they do not solve your problems, but they must keep crying, because the moment you swipe away, their "presence" disappears. So you are conditioned: you come to believe that "information density" equals "thinking density," that "having heard a lot" equals "having understood a lot." These sounds are precisely the contemporary jackal's howl—very loud, with no substance, keeping your attention from ever landing; over time, you lose clarity even about what you truly care about, what you are asking, and what you are thinking.
Category Two: "golden-sentence" aphorisms, "toxic chicken soup," "successology" on social media. "Strive and you will succeed," "Decluttering is letting go," "Your family of origin determines everything"—these sentences seem not false when taken alone, but their characteristic is that they have no concrete context and cannot withstand questioning. You nod along; they seem to resolve your confusion; when you actually push back, they immediately veer away to the next slogan. The fundamental feature of this kind of discourse is precisely the jackal's mark: it can cry at any time and any place, equally valid at midnight or high noon—it does not discriminate conditions, does not discriminate its audience, and above all does not submit to confrontation. The first step of what Buddhism calls 如實觀 (yathābhūta-darśana, "seeing things as they are") is to see whether words and facts correspond; the golden-sentence style is most afraid of exactly this step.
Category Three: "explanatory speech" in intimate relationships. A common pattern between partners—the person at fault explains at length "why I am not wrong and you are"; or endlessly re-narrates past injuries and possible future misfortunes, plunging the other into repeated self-doubt about "am I really that bad?" This kind of speech is precisely agitation as its nature: it is not resolving anything, but disturbing the other's cognition. Once is not enough; it recurs, because ceasing the cry would mean losing the tool that maintains self-justification. This is the most concealed jackal's howl—it operates under the name of relationship, cloaked as "communication," but at its depth there is neither substance nor direction, and it leads toward confusion.
Category Four: the "little-theater broadcast" in self-talk. Lying in bed at night, the inner show begins—tomorrow in the meeting he will surely make things difficult for me; that email was certainly misunderstood; that past mistake is surely still on his mind…. This endless inner narration is also the jackal's mark: it does not point to any present fact, only repeatedly shouts an imagined script. It even has a "temporal structure"—the deeper the night, the more active it becomes; the quieter the place (the bedroom, closed eyes), the louder it sounds. The ancient metaphor of the jackal crying "in the wilderness at midnight" describes precisely this—when a person's illumination (reason, settledness) withdraws, the emptier the external scene, the more conspicuous the disorderly sound.
The most common place of misprojection deserves to be pointed out: many people assume "野干鳴" = "harsh words" or "abusive speech." This is superficial. In fact, the fundamental mark of the jackal is "emptiness," not "harshness." Gentle, polite, seemingly learned, citation-heavy, dressed in cultural garb—as long as it does not point to reality, does not lead to stillness, and does not accept direct confrontation, it is the jackal. It can be tender, erudite, pleasant-sounding. This is why treatises such as the *Yogācārabhūmi-śāstra* (《瑜伽师地论》) do not judge heretical speech by "tone" but by whether it corresponds to truth. Contemporary people especially should keep this in mind—the most jackal-like thing is often not the fiercest voice, but the noise that most resembles "knowledge."
Why Contemporary People Need It
We live in an age of extreme abundance of sound and extreme scarcity of judgment. Algorithms make choices for us: they push what makes us comfortable, what keeps us from stopping, what makes us willing to click again next time. In the algorithm's objective function, there is no term for "real substance" whatsoever—it does not care whether you are clearer, more settled, or closer to the truth after listening; it only cares whether you stay. So even if we subjectively wish to hear good speech, the environment is systematically supplying jackal-cries.
Ears without discernment become habituated to mistaking frequency for truth, mass forwarding for credibility, comfort for accuracy. In such an environment, the three characters "野干鳴" are a dose of cooling medicine—they remind you: hearing is not the same as having heard; the content heard is not the same as the meaning heard; comfort while hearing is not the same as the truth of what is heard. Whether a sentence carries weight depends on what happens after you hear it—whether your mind is clearer, calmer, and more willing to face reality, or more chaotic, more agitated, and more in need of the next sentence to soothe it.
At a deeper level, the most useful aspect of this concept for contemporary people is—it keeps us alert to the noise inside our own minds. Many people can maintain distance from external disturbance, yet have no awareness whatsoever of the constantly unfolding drama in their own thought, thinking "it's just thinking anyway." But this inner little theater is in essence identical to the external jackal's cry: emptiness as its sound, confusion as its nature, not pointing to the real. Those who learn to see this layer will discover that installing a "listening rod for discerning meaning" inside one's own mind is more important than possessing any information.
Common Misreadings and Clarifications
Misreading One: 野干鳴 = abusive or unpleasant speech. This is the most common narrowing. In fact, empty and unreal is the essential mark of the jackal. "Harsh speech" (惡口) is a separate item within the five precepts (part of the offense of "harsh speech"), referring to coarse, hurtful language; 野干鳴 is a step higher—it refers to any linguistic performance that has speech but no meaning. The subtlest, gentlest, most eruditely packaged deluded speech all falls within this category.
Misreading Two: 野干鳴 refers exclusively to non-Buddhist teachings and has nothing to do with me. The scriptures do indeed use non-Buddhist discourse as the typical case (such as renunciants outside the Buddhist tradition, and the debates of various philosophical schools), but this does not mean that "laypeople" cannot be caught up in this mark. Anyone who speaks from a fixed position, refuses to be corrected by facts, and speaks only to win or only to console is uttering his own jackal-cry. Non-Buddhist teachers are not in the mountains; they are in that moment when you refuse to see the truth clearly.
Misreading Three: Recognizing the "jackal's howl" means rejecting the speaker and refusing dialogue. Recognizing delusion is for the sake of being able to leave delusion behind, not for standing aloof and negating the person speaking. The Buddha, facing non-Buddhist teachers, still taught patiently according to capacities; he did not refuse to converse because he saw their delusion. "Recognizing it" ≠ "walking away the moment you hear it." The real skill is: hear the distinction between substance and emptiness, yet neither startle nor reject—let the other's words pass through examination in your own mind, rather than plugging your ears before emotion takes over.
Misreading Four: Conversely, "solemn and grand language" is necessarily not a jackal-cry. This too is an illusion. Solemn ritual language, learned discourse citing scriptures, academic packaging—as long as they do not point to reality and stillness, they are all jackals. The contrast with the "lion's roar" does not mean that a solemn tone makes something noble; it means that speech that corresponds to truth, is bound to compassion, and is oriented toward liberation is what carries weight. Loudness is not necessarily a roar; solemnity is not necessarily truth.
Misreading Five: Treating "野干鳴" as a Buddhist term of contempt for outsiders. This metaphor comes from the scriptures and canon; its original intent is to train the ear and the mind of the practitioner, not to label any school or group. If the term is used to mock others, one has fallen into another branch of the jackal's cry—"agitation as its nature." Used correctly, it should turn back upon one's own speech and silence—this sentence of yours: is it a lion's roar, a jackal's howl, or something else?
Returning to the opening line—以野干鳴聲喻邪說妄語 ("using the wild jackal's howl as a metaphor for heretical views and deluded speech"). It looks like just a small rhetorical device, but in fact it is a rod for distinguishing sounds: in an age of ears full of clamor, it gives you a method of discernment—"when you hear something, first see where it leads you." Those who can put this rod to use need not flee to deep mountains, need not sever their internet or break off friendships; they only need to be able, at any moment, to hear whether this present sentence is a lion, a jackal, or something else. This is a rare, portable, lightweight practice that contemporary people can carry with them.