41The Four Shouts勘辨

師問僧：「有時一喝如金剛王寶劍，有時一喝如踞地金毛師子，有時一喝如探竿影草，有時一喝不作一喝用，汝作麼生會？」僧擬議，師便喝。

Linji asked a monk: "Sometimes a shout is the diamond sword of the Vajra King. Sometimes it's a golden-maned lion crouched to spring. Sometimes it's a pole probing the grass. And sometimes a shout doesn't work as a shout at all. How do you tell them apart?"

The monk started to answer, and Linji shouted.

Pointer

Linji (died 866) is famous above all for one thing, yelling, and here he sets out his own theory of it. The shout was never a tantrum, it was a tool, and he claims it comes in kinds. The "diamond sword of the Vajra King" cuts through confusion in a stroke. The "crouching lion" is raw force that pins you where you stand. The "pole probing the grass" is reconnaissance, a poke to flush out what you are hiding, the way a fisherman taps the reeds to spook fish into the open. And the fourth "doesn't work as a shout at all," it is doing something else entirely. Then he asks the monk to tell them apart, the monk opens his mouth to sort the categories, and gets a live shout that makes the taxonomy pointless. The instant the four shouts become a menu to memorize, you are standing exactly where the monk stood. This is the formal statement of the move you have watched land on people for twenty cases.