the sound of one hand clapping (a classic Zen koan)

"There is a voice in both palms, and what kind of voice is in one hand? What kind of voice do you hear in your hands?

Original story from [The Parable of the Applause

On one occasion, one of his disciples, a monk, asked Zhao Zhou, "Do dogs have Buddha nature or not?" Zhao Zhou replied, "None."

Famous koan of Zen Buddhism. When the disciples of Nanquan Pugan (748-834) were arguing in China about the Buddha nature (Buddha's seed) of cats, Nanquan taught them to slay the cat to sever the root of the conflict. When Nanquan asked him about it, Zhaozhou put his sandals on his head and left. Nanquan said, "If you had been there, the cat would not have been killed.

Don't kill the cat for the sake of saying that much! (aside)

The subsequent "he left with sandals on his head" was followed by "Does the cat have Buddha nature? Or not? It's like sandals right and left".

That "conflict is not inherently present, but is found by humans, and disappears when viewed differently."

Nansen killed the cat because he wanted to eliminate the conflict by eliminating the "existence of the cat.

Do cats have Buddha nature? Does the cat have Buddha nature or not? That's like asking which hand made the sound when you clapped your hands together."

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