When Governor Lu was about to return to his office in Hsuan-cheng, he came to bid the Master good-bye. The latter asked him, "Governor, you are going back to the capital. How will you govern the people?" The Governor replied, "I will govern them through wisdom." The Master remarked, "If this is true, the people will suffer for it."10
Nan-ch'uan had a refreshing lack of pomposity that would have well served a good many other Zen masters, ancient and modern.
When the Master was washing his clothes, a monk said, "Master! You still are not free from 'this'?" Master Nan-ch'uan replied, lifting the clothes, "What can you do about 'this'?"11
This calls to mind the anecdote concerning Alexander the Great, who when asked if he was a god as had been widely reported, responded by suggesting that the question be directed to the man who carried out his chamber pot.
His attitude toward the great Ch'an teachers of the past seems similarly lacking in awe.
A monk inquired, "From patriarch to patriarch there is a transmission. What is it that they transmit to one another?" The Master said, "One, two, three, four, five." The monk asked, "What is that which was possessed by the ancients?" The Master said, "When it can be possessed, I will tell you." The monk said dubiously, "Master, why should you lie?" The Master replied, "I do not lie. [The Sixth Patriarch Hui-neng] lied."12
Nan-ch'uan was accustomed to the rough-and-tumble of Ma-tsu's monastery, a place of shouting, beating, harangues, insults, "mindless" interviews, misleading clues, and mind-fatiguing "irrelevancies." Yet it was all done with a high intensity and intended for the quite noble purpose of forcing a disciple to find his own first nature, his own enlightenment. The monastery as it developed under these wild men of Southern Ch'an was nothing less than a high-pressure cell for those who chose to enter. Although these new techniques for shaking nonintellectual insights into Ch'an novices were essentially the invention of Ma-tsu, they were transplanted, refined, and expanded by men like Nan-ch'uan, whose new monastery seems to have had the same deadly-serious zaniness as Ma-tsu's.
Chao-chou Ts’ung-shen
Some of the most instructive anecdotes associated with Nan-ch'uan are those involving his star pupil, Chao-chou Ts'ung-shen (778-897), who came to be one of the major figures of the Golden Age of Ch'an and one of the best-remembered of the wild Southern masters. Although his real name was Ts'ung-shen, he is remembered in history (as are many Ch'an masters) by the name of the mountain where he held forth during his mature years. He was born in Ts'ao-chou in Shantung and early on became a novice monk at a local monastery. However, the urge to travel was irresistible and he left before being ordained, arriving at Nan-ch'uan's monastery while still a lad. The traditional first exchange typifies their long and fruitful relationship. Nan-ch'uan opened with the standard question: