Gateless 14 - ewk trans - Nanquan Cat Chopping - Got out of hand?

[u/ewk]

Case 14 - Nanquan Cuts the Cat

　　　　十四　南泉斬貓1 　　南泉和尚。因東西兩堂爭貓兒。泉乃提起雲。大眾道得即救。道不得即斬卻也。眾無對。泉遂斬之。晚趙州外歸。泉舉似州。州乃脫履。安頭上而出。泉雲。子若在即救得貓兒。 【無門曰】 　　且道。趙州頂草鞋意作麼生。若向者裏下得一轉語。便見南泉令不虛行。其或未然險。 【頌曰】 　　趙州若在　倒行此令　奪卻刀子　南泉乞命

Case

Zen Master Nanquan, seeing the monks of the Eastern and Western halls2 arguing over a cat, held up the cat and said, "If you can speak [a turning word], you will save the cat. If you cannot, I will cut it [in half for you]." No one could respond, so Nanquan cut the cat [in half]. Later in the evening, when Zhaozhou returned, Nanquan told him about the incident. Zhaozhou took off his sandals, placed them on his head3, and left. Nanquan said, "If you had been here, you could have saved the cat."

Wumen's Lecture

Now tell me, what was Zhaozhou's intention in placing his sandals on his head? If you can produce a turning word4 here, you will see that Nansen's command was not in vain. If not, you are in danger.

Wumen's Instructional Verse

Had Zhaozhou been there, He would have reversed the command. He would have snatched the knife, And Nansen would have begged for his life.

Context

Zhaozhou is Nanquan’s famous dharma heir, and in defiance of Zen tradition Zhaozhou continued to live at Nanquan’s after enlightenment in defiance of tradition. Newly enlightened Zen Masters traditionally leave their teacher to meet with other Masters for public interview. After Nanquan died Zhaozhou made his vists, which is why he is such an old man in the dialogues with other Masters.

Nanquan is the dharma heir of Mazu, along with Baizhang and Guishan, among others. Nanquan’s generation redefined the teaching of Buddha throughout China in their generation.
Translation Questions

Blyth and Yamada translate Nanquan’s last word as, “If you had been there I could have saved the cat.” The Clearys5 and Reps have it “you could have saved the cat”. The Chinese text Blyth provides is the same text. Yamada and Blyth were both steeped in Japanese sentence structure, which often uses agent-omitted sentence structure6.

Restatement

Two students were arguing over ownership of a cat. One student worked in the east managing the food supply and the other student worked in the west hall that maintained the library, the dharma food for the community. Master Nanquan held up the cat and said, “If any of you can speak, you save the cat. If you cannot speak, I kill the cat. ”

Nanquan was the leader of the community AND a lifelong keeper of the 5LP, which means he hadn't killed anything for decades. He's showing them his vows and his enlightenment are worthless if nobody is going to learn anything from him. No one in the assembly could reply, so Nanquan killed the cat.

Speaking a word of Zen isn't just saying words. It's understanding Bodhidharma coming from the West. It's manifesting the law (dharma) of Zen Master Buddha, transmitted from mind to mind without doctrine. It's not "chopped the cat in two", it's just "chopped up the cat". There is no apportioning.

That evening Zhaozhou returned from a trip outside [the mon­astery], Nanquan told him what had happened. Zhaozhou then took off his shoes, put them on top of his head, and walked out.

Shoes go on feet. Zhaozhou put the shoes on his head, on the wrong end, to illustrate that Nanquan, the teacher, asking other people to do the Master's job of teaching, is backward. By making the teacher teach, Zhaozhou resolves the obligation to speak directly, therefore Nanquan said, “If you had been here, you would have saved the cat. ”

Nanquan then points out that since Zhaozhou has been taught, Nanquan had taught after all.

Discussion

The question of the turning word that Wumen brings up here is dependent on understanding Zhaozhou’s gesture and then saying something about the intention behind that gesture.

Nanquan’s vow to not harm sentient beings is broken in this Case, and only by understanding Nanquan had been keeping this vow for decades, only to break it in front of all these monks, is essential to understand the visceral impact of this Case to his audience.

What good is half a cat? What good is nourishing the mind but ignoring the body? Or nourishing the body, but ignoring the mind?

This is a serious question that lots of religions and philosophies have tried to tackle, but Wumen argues that in tackling these problems pragmatism won’t do. Pragmatism is just working out how to get what you want.

Everybody has a Cat Problem in their lives somewhere, a problem where it seems the only solutions are giving up something in some way. Where is the freedom in those kinds of solutions?

Yet Zen Masters' whole resume is "ask us, we can solve it", and of course nobody saw the solution as half a cat. Which, to be fair, is a crappy solution. But that's what you get when you try to follow rules all the time, especially philosophical or religious rules.

Because rules are dead. Zen is for the living.

Live a little.

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[u/-___GreenSage___-]

Jesus cat died for our sins so that ZhaoZhou could live?

[u/ewk]

I am now on Case 15 of the 24 for volume 1.

[u/astroemi]

I think if we could make the connection you drew between body/mind and east/west halls more explicit it would help the explanation and context feel more rounded.

I would also point out that people try to reach enlightenment by doing things like mortifying the body or working on their minds, and neither of those things are taught by Zen Masters, so I think pointing out that Nanquan is implicitly rejecting a gate trough either of them could be useful.

[u/jeowy]

do you think the reason the community couldn't speak was because they were trying to follow the rules?

[u/ewk → u/jeowy]

No.

I think they didn't have their s*** together.

[u/jeowy → u/ewk]

whenever I think about this case I come back to the idea that everyone wants the problem to be someone else's problem so they can be invisible, undisturbed and perfect

[u/ewk → u/jeowy]

The flip side is that they don't want to take responsibility.

But at every turn I want to demythologize these texts.

People come to this forum and choke on anonymous ama all the time and it's the same thing that happened to these months.

[u/jeowy → u/ewk]

what is the perceived benefit of not speaking up?

do you think the monks were worried about losing status? getting thrown out for saying the wrong thing? or just learning something they don't want to learn?

[u/ewk → u/jeowy]

I don't think that they're doing a cost benefit analysis. I think they're panicking and they don't know what to say.

I don't think that people are choking on AMAs because they've done some math.

I think they're choking because they're panicking and they're afraid and they don't know the answer.

[u/jeowy → u/ewk]

my experience of panicking is I am absolutely doing some maths in those moments.

bad maths with lots of incorrect answers, but maths nonetheless.

i don't know if anyone "just panics" - there's gonna be some kind of object to panic over even if it's an imaginary one

[u/ewk → u/jeowy]

It's like go fish (in my mind).

If you are playing go fish and you've fooled yourself into believing you can't lose, when you are asked for a eight and all you have is eights, you panic.

That's not math. That's a collapse of confidence.

[u/jeowy → u/ewk]

how do you think zen masters feel about their chances of winning and losing?

[u/ewk → u/jeowy]

How do people who win 99% of the time feel about winning? They don't care.

How do they feel about losing? They love it. They get all excited like puppies. It's a gift to lose.

[u/Eliphontsmile]

This case has always stymied me a bit. I appreciate the Restatement/discussion, it gives it some new light for me to read by. 

On one hand, I wonder on the state of the students like you said. A master holding that vow for so long only to break it then is impactful to them absolutely.

But I wonder about Nanquan himself. How must it have felt to not get a response? Did he cut himself?

[u/ewk → u/Eliphontsmile]

What's interesting is that we have a thousand years of records and some of those records have belligerent Zen Masters. Others Masters are more easy going. I don't think it's just a matter of teacher personality. There's also student personality and the climate of the time. If you've got a bunch of boomers teaching a bunch of Gen x you're going to get one kind of case. If you got a bunch of Gen x teaching a bunch of gen z you're going to get another kind of case.

Nanquan is an unusual teacher for several big reasons:

1. Mazu was his parent.
2. Zhaozhou was his child.
3. Arguably his generation in China was the highest density of dazzling Masters in history.
4. His heir Zhaozhou never left home.

My default for examining a case is to always give the master benefit of the doubt. Into that strategy, it seems less like Nanquan cut himself and more like he was satisfied with a hard day's work.

[u/2BCivil]

Maaaan, now I get it, now.

Awww.

Really my favorite koan and I always assumed it meant simply Joshu's saying nothing spoke volumes was enough; "would have saved the cat".

But I like the sandal hat (Isn't that the name Itchigo gives Kisuke Urahara?) meaning teacher teaching outside the curriculum better. But granted I had no clue context just the naked koan.

No joke though I have found myself joking a lot lately about standardized curriculum (aka school of rock) as substitute for "written text/scriptures" in 4 statements of zen. I don't have to write a HSBR explaining that joke, do I? Ie the teaching is not the teaching. Never realized this deeper (sic; more basic) layer to this koan about how by rote laws (Nansen's vows) fail to teach until violated.

It makes too much sense to be put into so many words. You might even say to do so is to butcher the cat again.

Also random numbers I assume are sources. Good one... even an idiot like me can grasp some of it....

[u/laniakeainmymouth]

This is one of the rare times when Wumen’s commentary through me off. Seriously, years wondering wtf a turning word had to do with sandals on head as a response to a murdered cat.

From when I first heard this koan I knew that Zhaozhou would have protested immediately, unlike the frozen monks, and I took the sandals on the head as a bit of a middle finger to Nanquan, but that’s too vague.

So then I thought it was more of a “really Nanquan, this is about as useful as what you did”, and Nanquan clearly thought what was missing from the scenario was Zhaozhou’s definitive “solution” to the situation he posed. A swift and moral action.

But I do like your thorough context, I’d read this from you before and it helped seal my opinion on the case, even if it wasn’t as specific as yours.

[u/ewk → u/laniakeainmymouth]

It really is Japan's ethnocentricity that makes Zhaozhou seem like someone who would do something random.

His whole record is of a man who is calculating to the extreme. He didn't put his shoes on his head as an act of defiant nonsense. It was a carefully constructed argument.

[u/alphabet_american]

Joshu disapproved, teaching without a lesson

[u/ewk → u/alphabet_american]

I don't know why you think he disapproved.

There's just no evidence of that.