52Zhaozhou's Stone Bridge

僧問趙州：「久響趙州石橋，到來只見略彴。」州云：「汝只見略彴，且不見石橋。」僧云：「如何是石橋？」州云：「渡驢渡馬。」

A monk said to Zhaozhou, "The stone bridge of Zhaozhou is famous everywhere. I get here and all I see is a row of stepping-stones."

Zhaozhou said, "You see the stepping-stones. You don't see the stone bridge."

The monk said, "Then what is the stone bridge?"

Zhaozhou said, "It carries donkeys across. It carries horses across."

Verse 頌

孤危不立道方高，
入海還須釣巨鼇。
堪笑同時灌溪老，
解云劈箭亦徒勞。

He won't perch on the lonely peak, and that is what makes the way run high.
To fish the ocean you need a hook that lands the giant turtle.
Funny, old Guanxi, working the same ground in the same days,
called it "splitting arrows." All that effort, and for nothing.

Pointer

Zhaozhou is one of the most quoted Tang masters, and the town he lived in carried his name and was known for a grand stone bridge. The monk is a smart-aleck testing him: I came all this way for the legendary Zhaozhou, and all I find are some plain stepping-stones. Zhaozhou doesn't get defensive and doesn't take the dig. He flips it. Sure, it's a humble bridge, and that humble bridge carries every donkey and horse across, no questions asked. The grand thing isn't a monument you admire; it's whatever quietly bears all the traffic, including the rude monk standing on it. The verse adds that a real master won't pose on some lonely unreachable summit, and Zhaozhou's hook is big enough to land anyone. The jab at "old Guanxi," a contemporary teacher whose famous arrow-splitting trick the verse calls wasted effort, is just there to make Zhaozhou look better by comparison.