9Nanquan Kills the Cat南泉斬猫

Introduction 示眾

踢翻滄海，大地塵飛；喝散白雲，虛空粉碎。嚴行正令，猶是半提；大用全彰，如何施設？

Kick the ocean over and dust storms sweep the earth. Shout the white clouds apart and the empty sky shatters. Even enforcing the law to the letter is only half the work. When the full power breaks into the open, how do you handle it?

南泉一日，東西兩堂爭猫兒。南泉見，遂提起云：「道得即不斬。」眾無對，泉斬却猫兒為兩段。泉復舉前話問趙州，州便脫草鞋，於頭上戴出。泉云：「子若在，恰救得猫兒。」

One day the monks of the east hall and the west hall were fighting over a cat. Nanquan caught it up and held it high. "Say something and I won't cut it." Nobody spoke. So he cut the cat in two. Later he told Zhaozhou what had happened and asked what he would have done. Zhaozhou pulled off a sandal, set it on his head, and walked out. "If you'd been there," Nanquan said, "the cat would have lived."

Verse 頌

兩堂雲水盡紛拏，
王老師能驗正邪。
利刀斬斷俱亡像，
千古令人愛作家。
此道未喪，
知音可嘉。
鑿山透海兮唯尊大禹，
鍊石補天兮獨賢女媧。
趙州老有生涯，
草鞋頭戴較些些。
異中來也還明鑒，
只箇真金不混沙。

Both halls, monks thick as drifting clouds, all snarled in a knot.
Old Master Wang knows how to test the true from the false.
One sharp blade cuts clean through and both sides vanish.
A thousand years on, people still love a master at work.
This path is not dead yet.
A true listener is rare, and worth the praise.
Boring through mountains, draining the sea: only Yu the Great did that.
Smelting stone to patch the sky: only Nüwa had the gift.
Old Zhaozhou knows how to make his way.
A sandal on the head comes close.
In from a strange angle, and still he sees clear:
pure gold, never mixed with sand.

Pointer

Nanquan is a famous Tang master; the verse calls him "Old Master Wang" after his lay surname. Two groups of his monks are squabbling over a cat, exactly the petty attachment a Zen monk is supposed to have outgrown. He snatches it up and gives them one chance: say something real, right now, and it lives. Silence, so he kills it, a shock staged on purpose because nobody could produce a live response in a live moment. Later he tells his sharpest student Zhaozhou and asks what he would have done; Zhaozhou says nothing, sets a sandal on his head, and walks out, an answer so off the wall it has no handle, which is exactly why Nanquan says it would have saved the cat. You meet this case again in the Gateless Gate (case 14) and across two cases in the Blue Cliff Record (63 and 64), where the cooler telling here lets you sit longer with the gap between freezing up and answering freely. Don't get snagged on the cat; that is the bait, not the question.