In reading Crazy Clouds: Zen Radicals, Rebels & Reformers (Besserman & Steger 1991) I came across an amusing and disturbing paragraph:
Oblivious to popular resentment and surrounding himself with small-minded advisers, Tsunayoshi extended his private sensibilities even further into the public domain by declaring the killing of animals a capital offense. This necessitated the creation of an enormous bureaucracy consisting of police and inspectors to keep track of all newborn litters and to make accurate lists of the sex and markings of the animals. Samurai who defied this decree were mercilessly put to death at the shogun’s personal orders. Nicknaming him Inu-Kobo, or Dog-Shogun, the citizens of Edo did not grieve when Tsunayoshi was murdered by his wife in 1709.
In Zen Buddhism, the 77th case of the Blue Cliff Record is cake. A monk asked Yunmen, “What is talk that goes beyond buddhas and patriarchs?” Yunmen said, “Cake.” He makes us think of cake, imagining it’s sweetness, texture and satisfaction, a strange ghost that can be raised with a single word, somewhat like the ghosts of ancestors. The thought of a cake is both a cake and not a cake, much as a rock is sometimes a rock and sometimes the thought of a rock, and thus not a rock. Whether or not this has anything to do with the buddhas and patriarchs, it certainly has to do with cake.
Thought Itself 