Muhammad, lending his voice to the Quranic message, challenged those who doubted the miracle of the revelation to produce a text similar to it. A product of a society where poets were the guardians of their tribe’s reputation and were widely believed to be madmen – majnūn, or possessed by jinn – the potency of the uttered word could be overwhelming in emotional, spiritual, and political force. In several places the Quran asserts that Muhammad is neither a poet nor madman, and in one place where the Quran issues the challenge, it specifies the collaboration of humans and jinn in weaving their influence into the spoken word: “If the mankind and the jinns were together to produce the like of this Quran, they could not produce the like thereof, even if they helped one another.” (17:88). The language of the Quran, furthermore, is traditionally considered to be its own category of text, in distinction to prose, rhymed prose, and poetry. Though there were indeed imitators, they were judged to have failed; the beauty of Quranic diction persists to this day as a great source of confidence and beauty among Mulsims.

Over millennium later, there appeared Old Man Wang, or Shaykh Wang, as he is known in the early 17th century texts in which he appears. Born and raised in the Jiangnan region, the dense urban network around Nanjing in eastern China, Wang Daiyu was one of the first and most confident teachers of the peculiar form of Islam which manifested all those hundreds of years and miles away from the western Hijaz region where the first political strides were made of the spiritual, philosophical, and social system that bloomed forth from the initial ecstatic utterances of its founder. Remarkable for being among the first to articulate his faith in a complex, tasteful, and sensitive way in Chinese, one of his most amazing feats is his appropriation of Chinese Zen as a literary medium in his work Right Answers on the Search for the Truth, in which he takes up the challenge of producing the like of koans most prominently found in one of the most revered Zen compilations, Wumen Huikai’s Gateless Gate.

Much of the work of Chinese Muslim authors relies mainly on a Confucian style of discourse to elucidate the meaning of Islam in a way literate people of the time could understand, and Wang was no exception to this. But at the end of the Answers, there appears a striking display of what might be described as sympathetic antipathy for the rich tradition of Zen dialogue in China. Although his mission, reprehensible though it may be from another perspective, was to discredit Zen and poke fun at its quirks and hangups, his sensitivity and familiarity with the formal features and sensibilities of the tradition are striking and unexpected. Although short of divine revelation, the dialogues appropriated by Wang from the Zen literary tradition had nevertheless gained a canonical status among both literate laypeople and Zen devotees during his lifetime. Collections like the Gateless Gate and Blue Cliff Record continue to exert a strong influence on the worldwide Zen tradition, and continue to be explained in every possible permutation. In his execution of his own version of this project, Shaykh Wang plays the role of the formidable dharma combat master with cheeky irreverence yet remarkable sensitivity to the tradition.

Shaykh Wang certainly pulled out all the stops when he took up the challenge of producing an imitation of Zen. To a Muslim versed in the Quran, this may have conjured up images of the challenge posed to opponenets of Islam to produce the like of the Quran. In the following passages, Shaykh Wang displays the depth of his knowledge of Zen texts as well as what appears to be a determination to turn all the masters on their heads and to advance the idea that Zen is an absurd pursuit incomparable with the rational superiority of the “pure and true” faith of Islam. The question is, does he bring Islam closer to Buddhism in this endeavor, or pull it further away? By embedding Islamic metaphysics in the dynamics of Zen, he certainly shows that the thought that pervades the Gateless Gate is as valid a way as any to discuss religious ideas. No one who has this much fun in their writing can hold too serious of an opposition to his subject. See for yourself how he attempts to gain entry through the Gateless Gate.

問一僧。佛是乾屎橛作麼會？答云。色相。老人云。色即是空。僧云。居士怎麼道？老人云。名雖下賤，本為抬舉。僧云。求居士發明。老人云。種子不入土，紅黃永寂寥。僧問訊雲。今日方知低是高。老人云。還欠斟酌在。

The Shaykh asked a monk: “What is the meaning of ‘the Buddha is a dried-up shit stick’?”

The monk answered. “Marks of form.”

The Shaykh said, “Form is emptiness.”

The monk said, “What do you mean?”

The Shaykh said, “Although the name is lowly, the fundamental purpose is praiseworthy.”

The monk said, “Please tell me what exactly you mean.”

The Shaykh said, “If seeds don’t get into the ground, their intrinsic colors will forever lie desolate.”

The monk put his palms together in salute, saying, “As of this day I understand that the high and low are one.”

The Shaykh said, “You still haven’t poured the wine.”

The ultimate humble form to test the limits of Buddha nature, this was a stick kept in the outhouse used for exactly what you can imagine – scraping feces off one’s backside after a visit to the john. This comparison is commonly known from its Japanese pronunciation of kanshiketsu and was made famous by Yunmen in the Gateless Gate, case 21: A monk asked Yunmen, “What is Buddha?” Yunmen said, “A dried-up shit stick.” This provocative statement is not a metaphor. The Buddha is not like a flat stick used for the necessary task of cleaning the quintessential source of impurity, the Buddha really is a roll of toilet paper. Not just metaphorically for its highly appreciated function of doing the dirty work and helping to clear out defilements, but because it is the embodiment of ordinary mind, of no such Buddha.

To step into Shaykh Wang’s shoes for a moment, his own religion used the word ‘purity’ in its very self-appellation, and cleanliness and purity are centrally important in the performance of Islamic ritual. In Chinese, Islam is known as qing zhen jiao, or the ‘teaching of the pure and real,’ so the thought of comparing one’s prophet or god to such a despised object may have both horrified and delighted the Shaykh – horror at the theological connotations, but delight at the chance to spotlight this notion which even today remains repugnant to Buddhists unaccommodated to the peculiarities of the crazy Chinese Zen masters.

Another remarkable feature of this passage is the reference to the Heart Sutra, one of the densest and most infinitely complex texts in all of Buddhism. The monk, in response to the Shaykh’s request to answer the question about the kanshiketsu, says that it is a physical manifestation, or an appearance of form (se). To this, the Shaykh retorts craftily, “se ji shi kong,” a direct quotation from the Heart Sutra passage that reads: se bu yi kong, kong bu yi se; se ji shi kong, kong ji shi se (form is no different from emptiness, and emptiness is no different from form; form is emptiness, and emptiness is form). This must have infuriated the monk, whose own traditional arsenal was being turned against him with surprising deftness. If the lowliness of the shit-stick, or form (se), is in contrast to the transcendence of emptiness (kong), then the monk’s treating it as mere material is overturned because the shit-stick is simultaneously truly empty. Having gained the upper hand, the Shaykh then puts forward one of his favorite and most frequent images – the intrinsic colors contained in the seeds of flowers which are part, in his Islamic formulation, of the constant cycling of substance and function to and from the source of creation.

In the Gateless Gate, this same question – what is Buddha? – is asked directly four times. Yunmen has his kanshiketsu, Mazu has his “this very mind” and “no mind, no Buddha,” and Dongshan has his masangin, or ‘three pounds of flax.’ This last one, in Wang’s reformulation, is another example of his manipulation of Buddhist sutras in making his point. As in the previous encounter, the Shaykh is actually in the position of the monk who asks the question, and proceeds to dismantle the turning phrase. Elsewhere, however, he is the one to whom questions are posed.

問一僧。何為佛是麻三斤。答云：四十八願君須記。老人云。何用麻為？答云。正犯商量，求居士開示。老人云。成得繩來好縛牛。僧拜服。

The Shaykh asked a monk. “What is the meaning of ‘the Buddha is three pounds of hemp’?”

The monk answered, “You must remember the forty-eight vows of Amitabha.”

The Shaykh said, “What use can be made of hemp?”

He answered, “I am failing to grasp this koan. Please elucidate it for me.”

The Shaykh said, “If you wind flax into a rope, you can use it to harness the ox.”

The monk bowed.

Koans defy explanation. They are intended to be experiences, dwelt upon at length and returned to again and again, leading the student to a possibly quite unexpected realization, and an answer which makes sense only from the perspective of the one having the experience. Sometimes the insight comes from your teacher thwacking you with his staff, sometimes it comes from being told that Buddha is a three-pound lump of raw hemp. Often, koan exchanges include statements that seem to be non-sequiturs, like the forty-eight vows of Amitabha here. I won’t presume to explain the meaning, though I will say that the many Buddhas and sutras are common fixtures of Koan dialogues, but often in ways that contradict or repurpose the meaning of the original sutra.

The forty-eight vows of Amitabha are most completely presented in the Infinite Life Sutra, and they enumerate conditions that must be fulfilled before the Buddha Amitabha will depart for enlightenment as a realized Buddha. But Wang isn’t interested in this, he just wants to know about the flax. What is it good for? For making rope, of course! And the good thing about rope is that you can use it to tie down the bucking bronco that is your mind to finally rassle it under control. Shaykh Wang wants practical measures, but he also wants to cultivate mind. Three pounds is all he needs for both himself and his sparring partner.

And then there’s the original: Bodhidharma coming from the West. What does it mean? Zhaozhou says it is “the oak tree in the garden.” In another twist in the service of practicality, Shaykh Wang presents this Gateless Gate case by populating the tree with the mythical bird Peng. Peng appears throughout the Zhuangzi, one of the earliest and most venerable works of philosophical Daoism, and is the transformation of the great leviathan Kun. Peng travels without stop to the Celestial Lake on a half-year journey, while a sparrow spends half the morning flitting from tree to tree; but in essence they are the same in the use of their environment in accord with their own natures.

掃宗問。居士可知西來大意麼？老人云。西來大意從來惑，釋子朦朧誤認宗。又云。失誤在哪裡？老人云。宗外看。又云。宗裡是什麼？老人云。和尚可曾見大鵬麼？僧云。自未曾見。老人云。尋著窩巢，自然得見。僧云。蒙居士方便。

The monk Saozong asked, “Do you know the great meaning of ‘Bodhidharma coming from the West’?”

The Shaykh said, “People always misunderstand the great meaning of ‘Bodhidharma coming from the West.’ Harebrained monks misperceive the lineage.”

He again said, “Where is the mistake?”

The Shaykh said, “Look outside your lineage.”

The monk said, “What about within the lineage?”

The Shaykh said, “Monk, have you ever seen the great mythical bird, Peng?”

The monk answered, “I have never seen it.”

The Shaykh said, “If you look for its nest, you will naturally see it.”

The monk said, “You have skillfully caused me to understand.”

The nest is in the oak tree, just as Zhaozhou said. Just wait there and Peng will return home.

Of course, Shaykh Wang couldn’t resist one of the most bizarre displays of gratuitous violence in the Gateless Gate: Nanquan’s cat.

問一僧。南泉斬貓，下座道，還我貓來，一僧頭頂草鞋，便言貓兒活了，作麼會？僧云。若要貓兒活，還須頭作腳。老人云。怎麼不用僧鞋用草鞋？ 僧喝一喝。老人云。含瞞故套，莫向作家舞弄。遂問訊雲。求居士慈悲。老人云。因他貪草，故此高閣。僧云。如何犯了殺法？老人云。為他偷牲不改。僧云。此案從來噎，悶今日方才透徹。老人云。珍重。

The Shaykh asked a monk: “Nanquan killed a cat. He descended the dharma platform and said, “bring my cat back.” A monk put a grass slipper on the top of his head and said “the cat has come back to life.” How can we understand this?”

The monk answered, “If he wants the cat to come back to life, then he needs to make his head into a foot.”

The Shaykh said, “Why use the grass sandal and not use the normal monk’s slipper?”

The monk laughed.

The Shaykh said, “You keep it concealed in its sheath; don’t brandish it at a master.”

He then put his palms together and asked, “Please, sir, show me some compassion.”

The Shaykh said, “Because of his attachment to the grass, he bears it aloft.”

The monk said, “What crime did the cat commit to incur the sentence of being slain?”

The Shaykh said, “Because it did not change its theiving nature.”

The monk said, “I’ve always been clogged up by this case; today you have incisively penetrated through it.”

The Shaykh said, “Excellent, splendid!”

So it turns out after all the fuss over Nanquan’s savage killing of the cat can be traced back to a simple fact – the cat wouldn’t stop stealing the monks’ food. This especially entertaining reinterpretation of a classic Gateless Gate case may stand on its own as a perfect Zen answer – what more, anyway, does there have to be in Zen than the ordinary, than treating mountains merely as mountains? Wang’s answer seems to intend to out-Zen the original, while also poking fun at Zen teachers. On the other hand, this is the quintessential example in Shaykh Wang’s work of what may appear as not taking Zen seriously. Then again, a monk who takes it too seriously is liable to get a thirty whacks of the dharma staff.

Above all, a reader of this amazing work is left not with the feeling of a bitter attack on Buddhism, but one of playfulness and taking pleasure in bringing Islam into the infinitely captivating world of the Zen koan. To do so provides serious challenges to the author, but Shaykh Wang certainly succeeds in bringing Islam and Buddhism into one of the most intimate experiences of dialogue. Wang’s respect for Buddhism is more of a good-natured argument you have with a close friend, where it’s ok to be a little aggressive. Sadly, the relationship between Islam and Buddhism today exists in the post-Bamiyan shadow, and the wound of the destruction of the giant Buddhas at the hands of the fanatical Taliban may take generations to heal, but our friend Wang is the last person who would condone such a crime. Rather, in his act of taking up the Quranic dare in a Zen Buddhist context, Wang’s true message is one of breaking barriers, of breaking down even the idea that there is a barrier. Once we understand that we don’t need to get to the other side of the barrier, but that we already are on the other side, hopefully some of Wang’s adventurous, child-like curiosity will inspire us to be more mindful of the barriers we have set up in our own minds.