Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Buddhist
History and Religion
A Zen Koan Where A Cat Meets A Bad End

A Zen Koan Where A Cat Meets A Bad End

Last updated on: March 15, 2024 at 5:52 am by James Ford

0 Comments

A Zen Koan Where A Cat Meets A Bad End 2024-03-15T05:52:57-07:00 James Ford

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Cat with
Henry Sturgis Drinker
by Cecilia Beaux
1898

The Case

The abbot Nanquan came upon the monastics of the eastern and western halls arguing about a cat. He took the cat and held it up with one hand while holding a knife in the other. He glared at the assembly and harshly said, “If you can give me a word, I will spare this cat. Otherwise, I will kill it.”

No one spoke. So, he cut the cat into two.

That evening Zhaozhou had returned to the monastery. Nanquan told him what had happened. Zhaozhou took off a sandle, put it on his head, and left.

Nanquan spoke into the empty hall, “If only you had been there. The cat would have lived.”

Gateless Gate 14

There are a handful of koans we find repeated over and over. Nanquan and the cat is one of those. It’s collected in all the great anthologies. It’s case 14 in the Gateless Gate, case 63, in the Blue Cliff Record, and case 9 in the Book of Equanimity. Dogen cites it in his personal collection of 300 greatest hits, as case 181. And the contemporary Korean master Seung Sahn counted it as the 9th of his 10 Gates, later 12 central koans in his koan teaching.

Of course there’s another thing about this case. Pretty much everyone is upset by it. The first time I heard it was as part of a dharma talk, where the teacher wanted to make sure we understand that Nanquan didn’t really kill the cat. Even though it says he killed the cat. Near as I can tell that’s a recurring theme addressed by many commentators starting from near the beginning of its being collected and commented on.

The case figures two stalwarts of koan literature. First is Nanquan Puyan, who lived from the middle of the eighth to near the middle of the ninth centuries. He was a successor to the great Mazu Daoyi. Which makes him a Dharma sibling to Baizhang Huaihai and Layman Pang, among other luminaries of the classic Zen way.

After his awakening and some further training, he settled in a hut he constructed on the slopes of Nanquan mountain. From which we get his name. Eventually Nanquan become the head of a large community a bit further down the slopes of the mountain In the Gateless Gate he appears in six koans. He had seventeen dharma heirs, the most famous of whom is Zhaozhou.

According to tradition Zhaozhou Congshen lived from the last quarter of the eighth century right through to the end of the ninth, at least according to tradition. Famously Zhaozhou didn’t begin formally teaching until he was eighty. And then he taught for forty years. Often he is called the greatest Zen master of the Tang dynasty. Zhaozhou features in seven koans collected in the Gateless Gate, including in the first case, which as you may recall features a dog.

As perhaps a footnote, while the case is told the same in the Gateless Gate, the Blue Cliff Record, and in Dogen’s collection; in the Book of Equanimity, the second half, the meeting between Nanquan and Zhaozhou is treated as a separate case. Although as a matter for formal koan practice, the two points the saving word followed by the cat’s death first, and then Zhaozhou and those shoes second.

I do appreciate those who say Nanquan couldn’t actually have killed a cat. However, I think holding a sharp knife and knowing death is involved is important. Similarly, I don’t entirely agree with those who say the koan is not about ethics. Even as I agree it is about the deepest matter. Still. Everything we do has consequences, and almost always real-world consequences. So, when a koan involves killing, that should not be ignored.

One of the first, probably the first book I read on Zen was Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. One of the first stories that caught my imagination in that book was among the “101 Zen Stories” collected by Nyogen Senzaki. Senzaki had selected and translated them from a thirteenth century Japanese koan anthology, the Shasekishū, the Collection of Stone and Sand.

It tells about a disciple of a dharma successor to Hakuin Ekaku. The student had been given the Sound of One Hand, Hakuin’s personal addition to the koan collection. However, after three years he couldn’t get a grip on it. He went to the teacher, Suiwo, and said he was giving up. Suiwo encouraged him to stay another week. Then another. And one after that. The student was in complete despair. Finally, Suiwo said, sit for three days “And if you don’t achieve awakening, then you should kill yourself.” The student had his awakening on the second day.

As they say there’s nothing like knowing you’re to be hung in two weeks to focus the mind. That knife has a place. So, remembering the cries of the cat and blood on the floor is important.

And, knowing koans are invitations into the deepest matters of our human hearts, and are best treated as life and death important. If we acknowledge their importance with full respect for the gravity of what they touch, then we can turn to the two invitations this case offers to us.

Here, as Daido Loori points out, in the last analysis “This koan is not about killing or not killing but, rather, about transformation.” If we allow the koan to be the universe rendered into a handful of words, and if we remember everything going on is about us, you and me, then invitations abound.

For one, the monks of the two halls fighting over that cat are not unlike our own minds. At least I can picture my mind in action, as a crowd of disreputable figures of several sorts arguing about a cat. That or knives and their uses. My brain can go on. And usually does.

Knives. Rich and terrible images. How words “cut like a knife.” Or, more positively how language can be a Swiss Army knife, in all its utility. I also think of Abraham’s holding that knife to Isaac’s throat. Or Solomon ordering that baby to be cut in two. There’s a Chinese proverb, sometimes incorrectly attributed to the Buddha that “the tongue is like a sharp knife, it kills without drawing blood.” And to round this bouquet of images out, there’s another Chinese proverb, popular in Buddhist circles in the Middle Ages, “lay down the killing knife and instantly turn into a Buddha.”

My brain, our brain. How like a knife. But also, it’s complicated, like the whole thing about killing that complicates the koan about awakening. Or does it? Despite the truths of the Buddhist proverb, we can’t actually silence our minds, not completely, not without, well, dying. But. There are ways of dancing with our thoughts, sharp though they may be.

I think of that story by the ancient Taoist sage Zhuangzi, about an enlightened butcher, Cook Ding. Burton Watson’s translation of the story has the cook telling his Lord.

“A good cook changes his knife once a year — because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month — because he hacks. I’ve had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there’s plenty of room — more than enough for the blade to play about it. That’s why after nineteen years the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone.”

Koans invite us to use our minds rather than simply be used by them. Here we’re invited into the place where we set down the killing knife. Not as some fake or dead silence. But the deeper place where the currents play, but against it all, the deep.

With that we can meet the killer. Nanquan. Or. Pehaps, you know, you or me. The killer holds the cat in one hand and a knife in the other. The blade captures a glint of light. Nanquan smiles. Is it friendly? Or is it something else?

So, what’s the cat? If we’re all the parts, we’re also the cat. What is the cat to us? Egyptian mythology has seeped into our hearts, and most of us know cats are divine creatures, if a bit on the bloody side. There is a persistent if sadly apocryphal story that Mohammed had a cat named Muezza and once when the cat was asleep on his sleeve, but it was time to get up to go to prayers that he cut the sleeve rather than disturb his cat.

Most commentators on the koan suggest we take the cat as our true boundless nature. If we don’t hold the idea too tightly. Sure. Words are sometimes traps. Usually they are. But sometimes something else.

And then that word. What’s the saving word? When words are mostly traps. When we’re lost in a sea of words? What then?

Where is the saving word?

In Zhuangzi’s story Cook Ding continues his master class with the Lord. “(W)henever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I’m doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety, until — flop! the whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look all around me, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it away.”

As they say: form and emptiness. But that’s just too vague.

There’s a dead cat. There’s blood on the floor. Your knife. Your cat. Your blood.

We have, perhaps, in that moment cut the one into two. The Empty has become the messy world.

And in at least one iteration of the koan that’s the end of the matter.

How do we lean into that? Our boundlessness and the great mess, all the mess, the bloody mess, are not two. First the koan showed how the empty is the great mess.

But even in that version, the matter of Zhaozhou and his shoes follows immediately. And in all the other versions, this meeting is critical to allowing the koan to take us home. Aitken Roshi in his comments says he was given to understand that in ancient China putting shoes on one’s head is a sign of mourning. I’ve been told master Seung Sahn says the same thing.

I have googled around and I’ve not found anything to confirm this. I like that idea. But the detail doesn’t really matter. Whether it’s a sign of mourning, or, more direct, a meeting of the moment, full, and unflenching. Open. Engaged. Not the moment before, when the cat died. But the moment now when he’s told about it. Then what? What’s your answer?

It reveals how the great mess becomes boundless.

How do we let grief and regret meet and mix into our lives? How do we meet the moments where they appear? And then allow the mystery to unfold? Adding in our part, as appropriate. Not too little. Not too much.

As the scripture says, you’re not it. But in truth it is you.

How are we present in and with and to the whole mess of our lives? Lives with choices. Lives with constraints.

Lives with consequences.

Old Nanquan holding up a cat and a knife. Zhaozhou putting his shoes on his head and walking out.

The world of forms rising and falling. The boundless.

Not two.

New Visions

History and Religion

About James Ishmael Ford

Zen teacher and Unitarian minister James Ishmael Ford's next book, The Intimate Way of Zen: Effort, Surrender, and Awakening on the Spiritual Journey is due from Shambhala Publications in July, 2024. And is currently available for pre-order at Amazon. You can read more about the author here.

Previous Post

February 23, 2024

Noting a Printing Press and a Revolution

Next Post

March 4, 2024 On hearing "There is no God, and Mary is His Mother."

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"Allowing anger to contaminate one's hard disk can be detrimental to one's holistic well being. ..."

Dr.Cajetan Coelho

Hot Anger: Meeting Anger in Zen ..."

"I love this koan. every which way you turn it bites you, Thirty years on ..."

Mark Strathern

Nanquan Cuts the Cat: A Jesuit ..."

"As a substitute for religion, Zen is probably better than taking drugs. However, it can ..."

Theodore Brandley

The Selling of Zen at the ..."

"Craving and aversion are detrimental to one's peace and happiness. Easter is a wake up ..."

Dr.Cajetan Coelho

Easter: A Zen Buddhist Appreciation

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A Christmas Carol Abolitionist African-American Ahmadiyya Alan Watts Aldous Huxley Allen Ginsberg Amedkar Jayanti American politics American Zen Anaheim Zen Sangha Anglican Annie Besant April Fool Armageddon Art and Religion artificial intellegence Atheist Awakening B R Ambedkar Barlaam & Josaphat Beatnik Between Bhagavad Gita Bible biography birthday bodhisattva Bodhisattva Precepts Book burning Book of Common Prayer Book of Mormon Brahmo Samaj Buddha Buddhism Buddhist Buddhist Lord's Prayer Butterflies Calendars cartoons cat ChatGPT Chicken Tortilla Soup choices Christian atheism Christian mysticism Christian origins Christian Science Christian Zen Christianity Christianity and Buddhism christmas Christmas Truce Christopher Isherwood Church of Later Day Saints Cinco de Mayo circus covenant critical thinking culture D. T. Suzuki Dalit Buddhism Daniel Defoe Desert Fathers and Mothers dharma talk Dogen Donald Trump Dongshan's Five Ranks Dorothy Day dream Duty Easter ecology Edwin Arnold emptiness Empty Moon Zen Network Episcopal Church Eternal Now Ethics evolution existentialism Faith fantasy Fathers Day film film review fire Five Ranks Folk music food Form and emptiness Four Seals Francis of Assisi Francis Xavier Free thinker friendship George MacDonald Gerald Heard Glenn Taylor Webb God Good Friday Gospel of Gospel of Mark Gospel of Thomas grace Graduate Theological Unioin Graduate Theological Union Guanyin H R Blyth Hakuin Ekaku Hanamatsuri Hanukkah Harada Yasutani Zen Heart Sutra Henry David Thoreau Hermann Hesse Hinduism History and Religion history of religion Holy Spirit home Hospitality Icon Ides of March Isaac Newton Islam Islamic mysticism Jack Kerouac James Luther Adams Jiddu Krishnamurti Joan of Arc Johannes Gutenberg John Donne joke Judaism justice karma kensho King James Bible koan Koun Yamada Kyoto School Lewis Carrol Liberal Christianity Liberal Religion Life Plan Community Liminal literature Literature and Religion Liturgy Lord's Prayer Love Mahatma Gandhi Mahayana Martin Luther King Jr Mary Baker Eddy Mary Magdelene Mary Oliver Mayflower Compact Meditation memories memory metaphor money money and religioin Mormons Mother's Day movie review mysticism mythic Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church New Thought Nichiren Buddhism Nonduality not knowing Omar Khayyam Pacific School of Religion pagan Palm Sunday Passover peace Pentecost perennialism Phantastes Philip Kapleau philosophy Pilgrimage poetry Poetry and Religion politics Prayer Precepts Printing Press prophecy prophetic spirituality psychology Pure Land Queer religion queering religion Quietism Ram Mohan Roy rebirth recipe Relationships and religion religion religion and history Religious syncretism Resistance Retirement Retreat review Rissho Kosei Kai Ritual Robert Aitken Roshi Robert Ingersoll Rohatsu Romani religion Rosie the Riveter saints samadhi SanboZen Sangha Satyagraha science science and reigion science and religion science fiction seminary sermon Sesshin Sex and Religion Shinran Sikh Sikh tradition silence Social Justice Socially Engaged Buddhism Society and religion Soto Zen soul spiritual community spiritual practice Spirituality Sufism Suicide superstition Taoism Television Teresa of Avila Thanksgiving theological schools Theosophy Thomas Merton Time Transcendentalism Transcendentalist Trinitarian Trinity Uncategorized unitarian Unitarian Christianity Unitarian Universalist Universalism Vajrayana Vedanta Walking war Willa Cather William Ellery Channing wisdom women and religion women in religion World Teacher Writing zazen Zen Zen Center Zen inspired retriement zen meditation Zen Precepts Zen women

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which prophet had a vision of a rebuilt Temple with flowing water?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Joel Ezekiel Micah Daniel