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A student asked Yantou, “How about when the old sail has yet to be hoisted?
Yantou replied, “A small fish swallows a big fish.”
The student said, “How about after it’s been hoisted?”
Yantou said, “A donkey grazes in the back garden.”

—Entangling Vines Case 61, The Sail Has Yet To Be Hoisted

Lately I have been sitting with koans from the Japanese Rinzai collection, Entangling Vines. In Case 61 a student comes to Yantou asking about enlightenment, before and after. I find Yantou’s answers particularly interesting—I hear echoes of Yunmen when he was asked about the nature of things:

Then the student asked Yunmen,
“But when it’s not the things I can see, and it’s not what they’re doing, what is it?”
“Say it upside down.” 

Yantou talks about enlightenment turning the tables, moving into the impossible—it is not what you think—the little fish eats the big fish. He turns it over, inverts meaning and says it upside down. Linji might say to him, were he there, “Thief, thief!” or, “He brandishes the sword that kills.”

I think of my preconceptions about life: It is supposed to be like this: Big fish eat little fish, you do things in this order, when they act like that, it means this. I come with concepts about the world that close off reality, labeling things possible or impossible, good or bad.

The little fish gobble up my big ideas and sweep them away. Thief, thief!

When we see it upside down we allow life to be what it is: the bird singing its morning song, me waking to the dog licking my face. A donkey grazes in the back garden. That is just what a donkey will do. The chicken pecks at the grain. Who are you after all ideas have been taken away?

—David Parks

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David Parks Roshi, Director of Bluegrass Zen