From the famous_cases Treasury...Nanquan Kills a Cat
Zen is not Buddhism. Zen Masters don't teach meditation. Zen study has to be personal for it to be real.
Sutras are "Thus I have heard..." fanfiction while Zen koans are historical encounters.
Once the monks from the east and west halls were arguing over a cat.
Master Nanquan held up the cat and said, “If any of you can speak, you save the cat. If you cannot speak, I kill the cat. ”
No one in the assembly could reply, so Nanquan killed the cat.
That evening Zhaozhou returned from a trip outside [the monastery], Nanquan told him what had happened. Zhaozhou then took off his shoes, put them on top of his head, and walked out.
Nanquan said, “If you had been here, you would have saved the cat. ”
People from Zazenist backgrounds often try to interpret this case through the warped lens of their own faith's aversion to public argumentation, the lay-precepts, and the belief that Zhaozhou's response is equivalent to random noise or a Freemason-like secret passcode.
Anyone who spends an afternoon with any of the Zen books of instructional commentary (e.g., Wansong's Book of Serenity, Linquan's Empty Valley Collection, Yuanwu's Blue Cliff Record) will quickly encounter Zen Masters quoting each other only to then express their disagreement with the quoted Zen Master.
But spending an afternoon with a book seems to be their issue in a nut-shell...Zazeners can't read at a high-school level and claim that "because zazen/prayer" is good enough to understand why Nanquan killed the cat, why Zhaozhou put his sandals on his head, and why Nanquan said what he said in response.
People who say that are sort of thing are obviously morally, intellectually, and spiritually struggling to such an extent that it would not be fair to say that they are meaningfully alive in any sense of the term other than the biological.
Naturally, some people are going to take offense by my saying that. Just like some people are get offended at Nanquan killing a cat.
That is, of course, not Zen.