Report 51

I did not get to work with this koan as much as I would have liked, but basically felt that Nansen didn't need to be so harsh. :)  Maybe I'm just a softy for the cat, but isn't it kind of missing 'the point' of practice if we have to kill something 'innocent' to teach?

As for Joshu putting his shoes on his head, I thought maybe he was using the only thing he had to try to symbolically protect himself from the run-away cutting of the monk. :)

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Little embarrassed after reading others' very insightful reports on this and realizing I really did not dig very deeply. :)