Sometimes, Ch'an masters disorder phenomena while interacting with students by saying or doing contradictory things, but it always involves practice. If I went around in my daily life and said, "Bananas grow underground and ginger grows on trees, fish fly in the sky and sheep graze under water, " people would think I've just been released from a mental institution. The person at the ninth stage honors worldly conventions.

Student: What about the story of the master who burned the statue of the Buddha? Didn't he break important conventions?

Shih-fu: He only did that once, before he was a master. He did it to express a truth of the Dharma to his master in order to gain certification that he was enlightened. He would not frivolously chop up the Buddha statue and use it for firewood.

There is another story in a similar vein about a monk who was going along with a heavy wheelbarrow full of mud. The master, sitting beside the road, stuck his leg out in front of the wheelbarrow. The disciple stopped and said, "Would you please move your leg? I must pass."

The master said, "This here? This isn't a leg."

So the disciple said, "Okay then, I'll keep going, " and he rolled over the leg and broke it.