Zhaozhou
778 – 897 · Lips and Teeth
趙州從諗 · Zhàozhōu Cōngshěn · Joshu Jushin (Japanese)
No master appears in more koan cases. His method is entirely verbal: where others shouted or struck, Zhaozhou replied. His replies have not worn out in twelve hundred years.
Who was Zhaozhou?
Zhaozhou Congshen lived to be 119 years old — or perhaps 120, the accounts vary — and spent the last forty years of his life as the abbot of a small, poor temple in what is now Hebei province. He began his formal Zen training at the age of eighteen under Nanquan Puyuan, studied with him for decades, and did not become a formal teacher until he was in his fifties or later. His long preparation shows in his replies.
He appears in forty-three cases in The Blue Cliff Record alone — more than any other master in that collection. The Gateless Gate opens with his most famous exchange. The Book of Serenity, the Record of Equanimity: Zhaozhou is everywhere. No figure in the classical canon is more thoroughly represented.
His method is consistently verbal rather than physical. Where Mazu Daoyi might shout, and Linji Yixuan might strike, Zhaozhou replied. His replies are famous for their quality of simultaneous simplicity and inexhaustibility: “Have a cup of tea.” “Mu.” “The cypress tree in the courtyard.” These are not obscure or deliberately confusing. They are responses that carry exactly what they carry and cannot be improved by paraphrase.
Training under Nanquan
The meeting between Zhaozhou and Nanquan Puyuan is the source of one of the most important exchanges in the tradition. Zhaozhou arrived at Nanquan’s mountain monastery after a long journey, at a time when Nanquan was already old. He was accepted as a student immediately.
Their most celebrated exchange:
Case
Zhaozhou asked: “What is the Way?”
Nanquan: “Ordinary mind is the Way.”
Zhaozhou: “Should I try to aim for it?”
Nanquan: “If you try, you move away from it.”
Zhaozhou: “How do I know the Way without trying?”
Nanquan: “The Way is not a matter of knowing or not-knowing. Knowing is delusion; not-knowing is blankness. If you truly reach the Way without doubt, it is like the vastness of open space — how can it be called right or wrong?”
At these words, Zhaozhou was awakened.
What Nanquan means by “ordinary mind” requires care. It is not undisciplined mind or unexamined habit. It is mind before it begins to evaluate itself — before comparison, grasping, or avoidance. Walking, eating, working — these are not obstacles to the Way when done without the overlay of self-commentary and self-improvement. They are the Way. Zhaozhou would spend the next sixty years of teaching returning to this formulation in different configurations.
Mu: Case 1 of The Gateless Gate
The most famous exchange in Zhaozhou’s record — and arguably in the entire Zen canon — is short enough to quote in full:
The Gateless Gate, Case 1
A monk asked Zhaozhou: “Does a dog have Buddha-nature?”
Zhaozhou replied: “Mu.”
Buddhist doctrine holds that all sentient beings have Buddha-nature — the capacity for awakening. To answer “No” (Mu / Wu) appears to contradict the teaching directly. But to answer “Yes” would be equally wrong: both answers locate Buddha-nature as a property a dog either has or lacks, which is not what Buddha-nature means. The koan makes both conceptual answers fail.
Mu is not a word to understand. It is a question to carry — held continuously during zazen, during walking, during daily activity. Not “What does Mu mean?” but “Mu” itself, as a direct investigation. Wumen Huikai, who compiled the Gateless Gate in 1228, wrote of Mu: “Concentrate your whole self into this Mu, making your whole body with its three hundred and sixty bones and joints and eighty-four thousand pores into a solid lump of doubt.”
In Rinzai Zen, Mu is typically the first koan given to a student. In many lineages it remains the central practice for years. Its apparent simplicity — a single syllable — is part of its point: there is nowhere to hide a conceptual answer.
The character of his teaching
Zhaozhou’s replies are notoriously difficult to categorize. He was not dramatic in the manner of Linji. He did not use shock or physical intensity. He used language — but language stripped of the kind of content that can be abstracted and stored as a position.
This is characteristic. He is not being irreverent. He is pointing out that every name — including the most sacred names — becomes an obstacle if it calcifies into a fixed concept. The word “Buddha” used habitually produces a mental image, a set of associations, a conceptual fixture — none of which is the thing being pointed at.
A monk asked: “I have just entered this monastery. Please instruct me.” Zhaozhou: “Have you eaten your rice porridge?” The monk: “Yes.” Zhaozhou: “Then wash your bowl.” The instruction is complete. Not metaphor for something else. The washing of the bowl, fully attended to, is not different from practice. There is no separate domain of spiritual activity.
The title “Lips and Teeth” refers to the precision of his language — teeth cut, lips shape: both are necessary for speech, both distinct, both inseparable. His words have this quality: each element holds its position exactly.
What Zhaozhou means for a reader today
Zhaozhou is essential for any serious reader of the tradition for a reason that goes beyond his historical importance. His responses resist interpretation in a way that forces a different mode of engagement. You cannot study Zhaozhou in the way you study a philosopher. The material does not yield to conceptual processing.
The most useful approach: read the exchanges slowly. Do not immediately ask “What does this mean?” Ask instead: “What does this do?” Zhaozhou’s responses do something to the mind that reads them carefully — they interrupt the usual process of abstracting and filing. That interruption is the teaching.
His record is available in English in several collections: The Gateless Gate, The Blue Cliff Record, and specifically Thomas Cleary’s translation of The Blue Cliff Record (Shambhala) which contains the forty-three Zhaozhou cases. For a focused study of his exchanges, Yoel Hoffmann’s Radical Zen: The Sayings of Joshu is the most direct access available in English.
Why does Zhaozhou appear in so many koans?
Several reasons converge. He lived extraordinarily long — possibly 119 or 120 years — and spent decades teaching in a period of intense creativity in the tradition. His method was entirely verbal, which made his exchanges more easily transmissible as texts than the physical encounters typical of other masters. His replies have a quality of inexhaustibility that made them useful for later teachers: you can approach the same exchange from many angles without exhausting it. The koan compilers who followed — Xuedou, Wumen, Hongzhi — found his exchanges particularly generative material.
What does “Mu” mean in Japanese? And what is “Wu”?
Mu is the Japanese reading of the Chinese character 無 (wu). It is typically translated as “no” or “nothing” or “without.” In the koan, Zhaozhou replies to “Does a dog have Buddha-nature?” with this character. In the context of koan practice, translating it as simply “no” misses the point: the instruction is not to treat Mu as an answer meaning “no, a dog does not have Buddha-nature.” It is to hold Mu itself as a question — not intellectually but as a sustained investigation. The character 無 in Chinese also appears in phrases like 無心 (wuxin, no-mind) and 無為 (wuwei, non-action), which are related but distinct uses.
How should a beginner work with the Mu koan?
The traditional instruction: sit in zazen and hold the question “Mu” — not as an intellectual problem to be solved, but as a continuous inquiry. Not “What does Mu mean?” or “What was Zhaozhou thinking?” but the bare question itself. When the mind wanders to analysis, return to Mu. The point is not to arrive at an answer but to bring every bit of attention to the investigation. Over time, the conceptual questions about the koan drop away and something more direct takes their place. This is not something that can be explained in advance — it is a process that must be undergone. In a formal training context, a student presents their understanding of Mu to the teacher in private interview (dokusan); the teacher responds according to what they observe.
What other famous koans involve Zhaozhou?
Beyond Mu, several of his exchanges are among the most studied in the tradition. “Wash your bowl”: a monk says he has just arrived and asks for instruction; Zhaozhou asks if he has eaten, and on learning he has, says: wash your bowl. “The cypress tree in the courtyard”: a monk asks what the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from the west was; Zhaozhou answers with the cypress tree outside. “Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?” also appears in a version where Zhaozhou says “Yes” — both answers appear in different exchanges with different monks. “Does the dog have Buddha-nature?” “It does.” “Why does it run into the bag of skin?” — meaning: if it has Buddha-nature, why is it caught up in conditioned existence? The tradition works with both the Mu and the Yes versions as distinct practices.