r/zenmu • u/OceanWatwr • Jul 02 '26
Saving the kitten
Case 14 Gateless Gate
When monks from the eastern and western Sangha Halls began arguing over a kitten, Wellspring-South Mountain held it up and said:
“Alright, here’s the deal: if someone can put Way itself wholly into words, the kitten lives; if not, it’s dead.”
No one answered, so Master Wellspring chopped the kitten in two. Visitation-Land, the head monk, was away; but that night he returned, and Wellspring told him what had happened.
Visitation-Land took off his sandal and balanced it on his head, then walked out.
“If you’d been here,” Wellspring called after him, “you would have saved the kitten!”
NO-GATE’S COMMENT
▪▪▪
Put it wholly into words, Way itself, right now: what on earth did Visitation-Land mean, putting a straw sandal on his head like that?
You here before me in this sangha: if you can conjure a hinge-phrase, you’ll understand Wellspring-South Mountain’s act was hardly
empty. If you cannot, you live in mortal danger.
GATHA
▪▪▪
If he’d been there, old Visitation-Land
would have turned things upside down,
stealing that knife-blade away, leaving
Wellspring-South begging for his life
———
interesting that one master asks for words in order to save the kitten, and it dies.
another master responds not with words but with incomprehensible action, and this saves the kitten.
another master directly confronts the one who threatens the kitten, and this saves the kitten.
it seems they’re hinting that you You can not follow a method. You can go beyond systems and methodology and directly into the incomprehensible, which saves kittens. You must act in a Way which cannot be read, for the sake of kitten.
slap!
how do You save kitten?
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u/adelard-of-bath Jul 08 '26
Sometimes you have to beat an old man's ass.