Dingzhou Shizang [W-G: Ting-chou Shih-tsang / Joshu Sekiso]

                Dingzhou Shizang was crossing a bridge one day at the same time as a group of three Buddhist scholars. The scholars recognized from his robe that Dingzhou was a Zen monk, and one of them asked him: “It’s said that the river of Zen is deep and that its bottom must be sounded. What does that mean?”

                Without hesitation, Dingzhou took hold of the questioner and would have thrown him into the river if the two companions had not intervened.

                “If your friends hadn’t rescued you,” Dingzhou told the man, “I would have let you sound the bottom of the river for yourself.”

[Dingzhou Shizang – Zen Masters of China: 224, 244]