Blue Cliff Record, Case 63: Nanquan Kills the Cat (Gateless Barrier, Case 14)
The priest Nanquan found monks of the eastern and western halls arguing about a cat. He held up the cat and said, “Everyone! If you can say something, I will spare this cat. If you can’t say anything, I will cut off its head.” No one could say a word, so Nanquan cut the cat in two.
Night is night, and black is black.
There is no saving the helpless cat
Sliced in two.
Are they just bad monks?
Not one could open his mouth and
Move his tongue.
Later on that was the case
If you release time and space.
An idiot playing a hat game claims to have saved the day
If not the cat.
He danced around on his head turning the world upside down
Meow.
Nan Ch’uan claims to set the record straight and turns
The world right-side up.
Or does he?
The Blue Cliff Record dates from 1125, and the last editor of record was Chan Master Yuanwu Keqin who died ten years later. The Gateless Gate, which contains the same koan, was published a hundred years later in 1228 by the Chinese Zen Master Wumen Huikai. The editors were both Chinese. Both seem like heartless old pricks regarding cats, but both try their best to honor the precepts by teaching some monk break dancing and including it in the Koan, not as an afterthought..
I found this koan annoying (I am sure I am not alone); why are we left with blood on the floor? What the fuck was going on that paralyzed the monks’ tongues? The sight of Nanquan wielding a big knife? No, of course, he won’t really do it they think, but he does. Is there another case in the koan collection that involves breaking one of the grave precepts? That is the reason why it is famous. Or is it? It may be one of the only koans where we can reasonably assume the encounter happened: a teacher called Nanquan killed a cat in a monastery. It’s also the reason why so many people hate the case.
Black is black and dead is dead, but both Kequin and Wumen allow for dancing. Where do I stand more than 12 hundred years later? I would like to stand with dancing and making a fool of myself, but I know I cannot change the color of night. My date is approximately 2006.
I have been practicing and teaching meditation for over half a century, the majority in Zen practice. In the early 2000s, I taught basic meditation in the yoga studio of the Central YMCA in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, which I called the Tender Zendo. My teacher at the time, John Tarrant Roshi, told me that Zen’s strict form would be inappropriate for most people who would be coming. He recommended basic mindfulness practice, or “clearing meditation,” associated with the Elder School. He gave me a few books and set me off on my own. I was to check in every so often, which I did.
A core group of almost five to eight people sat together every Tuesday night for nearly seven years until the building was sold to be converted into housing for a law school. Though there was a huge turnover on those 15 cushions and chairs, a few people consistently showed up and
dedicated an enormous amount of energy to their practice. Among them was a young African American who called himself “Jihad.”
Jihad was very handsome and had great eyes. He had gone to UC Berkeley on an athletic scholarship. He was a Cal Bear, even a star player, though not big enough to be pursued by a professional team. I don’t recall if we discussed that, but I found out later. He was intellectually gifted. And he was gay.
I asked why he’d changed his name. He told me that he was engaged in a holy war. It was after 9/11, and few Americans knew of another interpretation of the Qu’ran’s injunction to followers of the Prophet. Jihad was fighting his demons in a way that inspired me: he was a meth addict, and meditation was his way of cultivating contact with his Higher Power. He sat in meditation with a fierce determination, almost as if he were on a Crusade. His war was the disciplined and serious work of gaining sobriety and finding a path for his gifts.
I was very careful to be just a meditation guide, not a teacher, and certainly had no sexual entanglement. But we had many conversations. I learned that his brother had been killed by gang rivalry in East Oakland. I learned that his single mom was very involved in the black church. When he decided to sign up for the Peace Corps, he asked my opinion, and I did think that spending time in Africa might be a great thing. He went to Kenya. He loved urban Africa but hated village life--so much that he quit and returned to San Francisco.
One week, he told me that he was going into residential rehab and would not be coming for the duration. This was long before I ever had any personal experience with meth.
But then one night when he was in treatment, he called me. He sounded desperate. He was sure that the doctor had messed with his medications. He knew it was wrong, not working. He felt crazy. I thought he might be paranoid, but all I could do was listen. I tried to call him back the next day, but the rehab wouldn’t connect me because I was not family or a professional connected with his treatment. I tried saying I was his spiritual counselor, but no luck. He may not have even been there.
The following Tuesday night, I heard noise at the door while we were sitting. It was just a few feet to the right of my cushion. I thought I might have seen him, but I am unsure—my memory is not that clear—but I did hear his voice. Jihad had rushed up the stairs. He was fighting with the desk clerk who’d followed him and blocked him from coming in. They were loud. After a few minutes, I started to get up and go to the door but the noise stopped. Later, at the front desk, the clerk told me that he thought Jihad was high. He could not let anyone in the building if he suspected they were on drugs. He was sorry, but those were the rules.
The next day, I tried to call him again in the rehab, but nothing. That brief glimpse of him (if I did see anything) trying to get into the meditation hall was the last time I saw or heard from him. A few weeks later, I got an email announcing his funeral from someone I did not know. It was a friend who explained that he just went through his address book. He apologized that it had to be so impersonal, but he was in shock.
He’d been shot by police at a popular restaurant in the Castro when someone on staff had called to complain about his behavior; he was a big black guy acting strangely. The team they sent was trained to kill. Jihad ran into the kitchen and grabbed a knife. Witnesses said there was no reason for the police to have opened fire. The police said they’d not been trained to diffuse a situation when a drug addict’s treatment has failed. The bullet went straight to his heart; he died instantly.
At least his mother would not have to hold her beloved, handsome son dead and disfigured, though how could there be any consolation in that?
I was shocked and devastated. I cried for three days. I wondered if things might have turned out differently if I had gone to the door and opened it, talked to the guy from the front desk and sat with you, talked with you, my friend. But like the monks in Nanquan’s waring monastery, my tongue was tied. I was haunted by that question. I will never know. Of course having learned my own lessons about sobriety the hard way, I realize that I did about all that I could have done, but somehow that is not enough.
Twenty years later I still ask that question: why did I not get up and open the door?
The Verse
Yes, there is a holy war worth fighting. Maybe we have to really turn to Hafiz for an answer.
“You Were Brave in that Holy War”
You have done well
In the contest of madness.
You were brave in that holy war.
You have all the honorable wounds
Of one who has tried to find love
Where the Beautiful Bird
Does not drink.
May I speak to you
Like we are close
And locked away together?
Once I found a stray kitten
And I used to soak my fingers
In warm milk;
It came to think I was five mothers
On one hand.
Wayfarer,
Why not rest your tired body?
Lean back and close your eyes.
Come morning
I will kneel by your side and feed you.
I will so gently
Spread open your mouth
And let you taste something of my
Sacred mind and life.
Surely
There is something wrong
With your ideas of
God
O, surely there is something wrong
With your ideas of
God
If you think
Our Beloved would not be so
Tender.
And finally the Koan supplies a monk who thinks he has the turning word: He’s just a wise-ass who comes on stage to do his little dance to delight the cat killer for the cheap laugh. I’ll punch his fucking lights out, and then ask him to cover his head and do pooja for Jihad.
