Nanquan Cuts the Cat

Book of Serenity, Case 9; Gateless Barrier, Case 14; Blue Cliff Record, Cases 63 & 64

May 13th, 2026. 

At least nine Jesuits have been authorized to teach the koan curriculum, which is by far the largest representation of any specific religious order among Zen teachers, but there haven’t been any Jesuit commentaries on the koans. Today, the opening of Parliament in the UK began with a ceremonial search of the Palace of Westminster's basement, a nod to the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, which is also known as the Jesuit Treason. I will take the occasion to write a thoroughly Jesuitical* commentary.

The Koan:

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.

That evening, Zhaozhou returned from outside and Nanquan told him what happened. 

Zhaozhou removed a sandal from his foot, put it on his head, and walked out. Nanquan said, “If you had been there, the cat would have been spared.”

A Jesuit Commentary: 

1. Equivocation

In my view, this is one of the most consequential koans in the curriculum. Outside of the No koan, I’ve spent more time wrestling with this case than any other that I’ve tackled.

How did this koan earn a place in three of the collections? 

It’s no plate of milk. Many Zen students are repulsed. It even seems to condone violating the first grave precept. The title is “Nanchuan Cuts the Cat,” not “Nanchuan Plays with the Idea of Killing a Cat.” It doesn’t settle the moral question of cat killing; that’s not the point. But it doesn’t evade murder and death either: Nanchuan actually kills a helpless, innocent cat who has no say in the matter. We don’t know if it was a cute little house kitty or a nasty old street cat, but for sure, there was splattered blood and two halves of a dead cat. 

Most introspection begins with an inner battle. I am no opponent of grandmother Zen. I normally give myself plenty of room for fluid inquiry. However, I will begin this commentary by focusing on another aspect of the story: its language. The request for a response becomes a demand: “If you can say something, I will spare this cat. If you can’t say anything, I will cut off its head.” I have a say in the matter, a word, or maybe even several. All we know with certainty is that some monks, probably with too much time on their hands, got into an argument about a cat—a few words, a question, perhaps an insult, perhaps a confused answer or no answer, anger, then silence searching for an appropriate response, and finally a dire consequence. It’s easier to leave the koan’s argument without form and content, but (at least in my experience), koans don’t work like that. We fill them with our shadows.

In 2009, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival produced a play by one of my Jesuit classmates. Father Bill Cain’s “Equivocation” was very well received, as I would expect. Bill is a talented, inventive writer and committed Christian. However, I’m not going to borrow much other than the title and the predicament: the setting is England during the reign of James the First; the situation is the plight of the Jesuits who were sent to minister to Roman Catholics in a militantly Protestant country, and the martyrdom of 34 saints and 149 blesseds, even one bearing my surname, Blessed William Ireland, S.J. They were part of a larger movement of “recusant” English Catholics, waiting, hiding and organizing the reestablishment of religion under the Pope. They were divided over tactics; they were hunted down; many were arrested; many would die, and ultimately, they would fail.

The title “Equivocation*” refers to a contemporaneous manual that outlined a highly controversial defense strategy for Roman Catholics to survive the "bloody questions." The Jesuit missionaries were coached, and in turn coached others to use ambiguous language or a "mental reservation," misleading answers that would not reveal the identities of their fellow Catholics. As scrupulous religious people, they had to sort out the moral consequences of lying. Priests had the additional burden of guarding the seal of confession. If anyone refused to sign the Oath of Supremacy, recognizing Elizabeth I, and subsequently James I, as the head of the church, they became “recusants,” and faced severe penalties—fines, property confiscation, and imprisonment. It could include high treason, the punishment for which was horrific: execution by being hanged, drawn, and quartered*.

We do not know the author of “Equivocation,*” though there is a definite Jesuit turn to the argument. In fact, this is the origin of the less-than-flattering definition of “Jesuitical” to mean someone who practices crafty, deceitful, intricate arguments designed to mislead, dissemble, or dodge direct answers. We know that a copy of the treatise was found among Father Henry Garnet’s books, the Jesuit superior in England, when he was arrested after the failed Gunpowder Plot, also known as the Jesuit Treason of 1605. It was used against him in his trial. 

Garnet was a very refined, highly educated priest, a trained musician, and an unlikely leader of a terrorist plot to kill the King, a large number of nobles, and MP’s. Guy Fawkes Night is celebrated to this day with fireworks and the burning of effigies of the man caught guarding 36 barrels of gunpowder in the basement of the House of Parliament. Fawkes and Garnet knew one another. Garnet had been seen meeting with Fawkes. Garnet claimed that he’d been trying to persuade Fawkes to find a nonviolent tactic for finding accommodation for Roman Catholics. 

We don’t know for certain whether or not any Jesuit actually plotted the terrorist attack, though I think it’s highly likely. Shakespeare knew about it and had an opinion. In Act 2, Scene 3 of Macbeth, the drunken porter, acting as hell’s gatekeeper, welcomes a parade of condemned souls into the castle, including an “equivocator that could swear in both scales against either scale,” . . .  the "open and broad lying and forswearing." 

When Garnet defended himself, his words seemed to match the circumstances, but canceled out other words. The Privy Council used the handbook that outlined this type of argument, “Equivication,” as evidence to condemn Garnet. The resulting action was swift. He was executed on 3 May 1606, three days after the verdict. Toothless grannies pushed to the front row at his public execution with clean napkins to mop up the martyr’s blood as a talisman. 

These events happened more than 400 years ago. How could they enter my life in a real way if I didn’t share something with the martyrs? I have no enthusiasm for converting the Church of England. In fact, I’m quite sympathetic towards the beauty of the language and form of its liturgy. There is a high probability that I am related to Blessed William Ireland, but it still feels worlds away. 

When my teacher gave me the koan, the cat’s dark shadow began to appear very slowly in my own life — the fight between the monks became the execution of Jesuits who had been trained at the English College in Rome or Douai. Yet it became personal. We sang the same Te Deum that the 16th-century Jesuits sang when they learned of a Jesuit’s execution in London. We celebrated their feast days. We’d heard stories of their torture and death, which were presented as heroic qualities we should emulate.

___________

Notes: 

*Although many Jesuits of other eras might have entertained the idea that a consistent spiritual and moral tone might be identified as “Jesuitical,” I am afraid that I only use the term to refer to my 11 years in the Society of Jesus. I’ve worked with the koan under a teacher’s guidance on at least 4 occasions without any access to anyone’s commentary. This last time was quite different; connections with my Jesuit training kept me company. At times, it became very difficult. What follows are field notes from that exploration.

Equivocation is a critically acclaimed 2009 play written by American Jesuit priest and playwright Bill Cain. The play premiered at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The definition of equivocation is “the use of ambiguous language to conceal the truth or to avoid committing oneself; prevarication.”

*Michel Foucault uses a brutal public execution involving drawing and quartering in the opening pages of Chapter 1, "The Body of the Condemned," in his seminal 1975 book, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. While the traditional English sentence was precisely "hanged, drawn, and quartered," Foucault specifically details the French variation of the punishment inflicted upon the regicide Robert-François Damiens in 1757. Damiens was condemned for attempting to assassinate King Louis XV.