Thursday, May 21, 2015

A Chan Case

An English rendering of a well-known Chan story by X. Z. Shao.
 
“Come, a hard nut 
for you to crack.”
said a master to his disciple,
“A man raised a goose
in a huge vase with its neck
about the size of your fist.
It soon grew to be
a large goose in the vase’s belly,
and the vase neck is too small
for it to come out.
Now, you need to get it out
without breaking the vase,
and the goose should be
alive and intact.
How do you do it?”
His disciple racked
his brain for a solution---
the vase, the goose,
breaking the vase,
killing the goose...
He troubled his mind
for a long time and stuck.
At that moment,
he found a staff
falling on his head out of the blue,
and a thunderbolt voice
of his master exploded, “out”.
His mind blacked out all a sudden
and he smiled after a while.

      2015/5/21

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