58Case 58

僧問趙州：「至道無難，唯嫌揀擇，是時人窠窟否？」州云：「曾有人問我，直得五年分疎不下。」

A monk said to Zhaozhou, "'The Great Way isn't hard, it just won't put up with picking and choosing.' Isn't that line a den people crawl into and hide?"
Zhaozhou said, "Somebody asked me that once. Five years on, I still can't talk my way out of it."

Verse 頌

象王嚬呻，
獅子哮吼。
無味之談，
塞斷人口。
南北東西，
烏飛兔走。

The great elephant stirs and snorts,
the lion roars.
Flavorless talk
that stops every mouth.
North, south, east, west,
the crow flies, the rabbit runs.

Pointer

Same famous line as the case before it: the Great Way isn't hard, it just won't put up with picking and choosing, the opening of a well-worn Zen poem about dropping the habit of sorting everything into like and dislike. By Zhaozhou's day the line was a greatest hit, quoted so often it had hardened into a slogan people could hide behind. So the monk sets a sly trap: isn't that very quote just another cozy den you crawl into to dodge the real work? Agree and he's snared you, defend the line and you're stuck inside the den he named. Zhaozhou takes neither door. Instead of arguing he admits that someone pinned him with this same question five years back and he still can't talk his way out, which, from the sharpest tongue in Chan, is itself the move; he won't perform an answer to prove he's free of the trap. The verse closes on the crow and the rabbit, old shorthand for sun and moon: while you debate the slogan, the days are flying.