Once, a monk asked master nan-yin, ”what is your special teaching?”
Nan-yin replied, ”in autumn we reap; in winter we store.”
Another monk asked nan-yin, ”what is the way?”
Nan-yin answered, ”a kite flies across the great sky; nothing remains there.”
On another occasion, nan-yin ascended the rostrum and said, ”above the mass of red flesh stands one at an immeasurable height.”
A monk then came out from the assembly and said, ”isn’t this ‘above the mass, and so on,’ the master’s way?”
Nan-yin replied, ”that’s so.”
At that, the monk then overturned the zen seat.
Nan-yin said, ”look what a rough, wild fellow you are!”
The monk didn’t know what to say or do and nan-yin drove him out of the temple.
