Introducing the new Koan Of The Week thread! Excited to finally be getting this going after months of planning. Every week a user will post a koan or short passage from the current ZMOTM. If you want in hit me up.
Deshan Xuanjian said to the assembly, "If you ask, you have missed it. If you don't ask, you have also missed it.”
Then a monastic stepped forward and made a bow. Deshan hit him.
The monastic said, "I haven't even asked yet. Why did you hit me?"
Deshan said, "What difference would it make if I had waited till you spoke”?
u/ytumith’s comment:
Deshan apparently was a furious person by nature. When he first heard about the Zen sect he wanted to venture out to teach it a lesson. It seems he was outraged by the idea that someone should be able to directly point to human mind without any form or sturdy tradition, when very studious monks of his own sect couldn't get there in a lifetime. He was stumped by a rice-cake selling woman, whose interaction with Deshan is noted down as a koan itself. When he was finally enlightened, he started to direct his previous aggression on the thing that previously gave him fortitude. He burned scriptures and beat monks that asked too much and got huddled up in conceptual thought.
To my mind, Deshan traded one enemy for another but didn't bother to fight the concept "enemy".
Submitted February 02, 2019 at 05:14AM by TFnarcon9 http://bit.ly/2G5CAqG
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