The Gateless Gate: The Classic Book of Zen Koans

More Praise for

The Gateless Gate

Kōun Yamada’s superb translation and pithy commentaries directly convey Master Mumon’s vivid Zen. How fortunate we are to have this book!

— Roko Sherry Chayat, abbess of Zen Center of Syracuse Hoen-ji

Koans are the intimate family history of Zen. The awakened mind of the Zen ancestors is conveyed, but also their effort, sweat, pain, and joy. Kōun Yamada’s excellent translation and commentary helped opened the door to this world for many of us, and this new edition is sure to do so for many more.

— Kyogen Carlson, abbot of Dharma Rain Zen Center

Kōun Yamada

IN The Gateless Gate, ONE OF MODERN ZEN’S UNIQUELY INFLUENTIAL MASTERS OFFERS COMMENTARIES ON THE Mumonkan, A CLASSIC COLLECTION OF ZEN’S GREATEST TEACHING STORIES.

"Kōun Yamada was of that fine old breed of Japanese Zen masters — piercing, disciplined, and always on point. The Gateless Gate distills his teaching and spirit marvelously. It is an essential text for anyone interested in the Zen koan and in the process of Zen awakening."

NORMAN FISCHER, author of Training in Compassion

As Yamada Roshi’s Dharma heir, his teachings are my own — as they are for his many other successors in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Now our students and a new generation of Zen students everywhere can benefit directly from his straightforward guidance. I’m very grateful.

ROBERT AITKEN, author of Taking the Path of Zen

"Kōun Yamada gave the teachings in this book out of concern that true Zen understanding was dying out. His clear and good-humored explanations make The Gateless Gate indispensible to students of koans and accessible to everyone."

JAN CHOZEN BAYS, abbess of Great Vow Zen Monastery

Yamada Roshi’s profound teachings will help Zen students of all abilities to appreciate the significance of koans, not as paradoxical riddles, but as touchstones of reality.

GERRY SHISHIN WICK, author of The Book of Equanimity

This is an essential book for everyone working on koans and an inspiring window on Zen practice.

DAVID LOY, author of A New Buddhist Path

KŌUN YAMADA played a seminal role in bringing Zen from Japan to the West and opening the interfaith dialogue with Christianity. Yamada Roshi’s accomplishments are all the more remarkable because, like so many Americans who study Zen, he was a layman. He is also the author of Zen: The Authentic Gate. Yamada Roshi died in 1989.

Contents

Foreword

Preface to the Wisdom Edition

Preface to the Wisdom Edition

Author’s Preface to the First Edition

Note on Chinese and Japanese Therms

Shūan’s Prepace

Dedication

Mumon’s Preface

Chapter 1 - Jōshū’s Dog

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 2 - Hyakujō and the Fox

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHO ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

NOTES

Chapter 3 - Gutei’s One Finger

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

NOTE

Chapter 4 - The Barbarian Has No Beard

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

NOTE

Chapter 5 - Kyōgen’s Man Up a Tree

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 6 - Buddha Holds Up a Flower

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

NOTE

Chapter 7 - Jōshū’s Wasb Your Bowls

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

N THE VERSE

Chapter 8 - Keichū Makes Carts

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 9 - Daitsū Chishō

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 10 - Seizei the Poor

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

NOTES

Chapter 11 - Jōshū Examines the Hermits

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 12 - Zuigan Calls Himself Master

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 13 - Tokusan Carries His Bowls

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 14 - Nansen Kills the Cat

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 15 - Tōzan’s Sixty Blows

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

NOTE

Chapter 16 - The Sound of the Bell and the Seven-Panel Robe

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 17 - The National Teacher’s Three Calls

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 18 - Tōzan’s Masagin

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 19 - Ordinary Mind Is the Way

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 20 - A Man of Great Strength

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 21 - Unmon’s Kanshiketsu

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 22 - Kashyapa’s Flagpole

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 23 - Think Neither Good Nor Evil

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

NOTE

Chapter 24 - Leaving Speech and Silence Behind

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 25 - The Sermon of the Third Seat

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

NOTES

Chapter 26 - Two Monks Roll Up the Blinds

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 27 - Not Mind, Not Buddha

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 28 - Ryūtan’s Name Echoed Long

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE AND MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 29 - Not the Wind, Not the Flag

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 30 - Mind Is Buddha

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 31 - Jōshū Sees Through an Old Woman

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 32 - A Non-Buddhist Questions Buddha

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 33 - No Mind, No Buddha

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 34 - Knowing Is Not the Way

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 35 - Seijo’s Soul Is Separated

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 36 - Meeting a Man Who Has Accomplished the Way

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

NOTE

Chapter 37 - The Oak Tree in the Garden

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 38 - A Cow Passes Through a Window

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 39 - Unmon and a Mistake in Speech

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 40 - Kicking Over the Water Jug

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 41 - Bodhidharma Puts the Mind to Rest

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 42 - A Woman Comes Out of Samadhi

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 43 - Shuzan’s Shippei

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 44 - Bashō’s Shujō

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 45 - Who Is That One?

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Chapter 46 - Stepping Forward From the Top of a Pole

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

NOTE

Chapter 47 - Tosotsu’s Three Barriers

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

NOTE

Chapter 48 - Kempō’s One Way

THE CASE

MUMON’S COMMENTARY

THE VERSE

TEISHŌ ON THE CASE

ON MUMON’S COMMENTARY

ON THE VERSE

Mumon’s Postscript

Mumon’s Zen Warnings

Ōryū’s Three Barriers

Muryō Sōju’s Verses on Ōryū’s Three Barriers

Mōkyō’s Epilogue

Amban’s Forty-ninth Case

Appendix 1 - Introduction to the History of Zen Practise

Appendix 2 - Writings and Zen Records Mentioned in the Introduction to the ...

Appendix 3 - Personal Names, Place Names, and Writings (Japanese — Chinese)

Appendix 4 - Personal Names, Place Names, and Writings (Chinese — Japanese)

Appendix 5 - Lineage Charts

Appendix 6 - Foreword to the Previous Edition

Appendix 7 - Preface to the Previous Edition

Foreword

Kōun Yamada Roshi (1906-1989), author of this volume of Zen talks on a thirteenth-century collection of koans entitled Gateless Gate (Wumen-kuan), will likely be remembered as one of the great Zen Masters of the twentieth century. Longtime head of the Sanbo Kyodan Association of the Teaching of the Three Treasures Zen community and main Dharma successor to Hakuun Yasutani Roshi (1885-1973), his teaching career spanned nearly three decades from the early 1960s up to his death. His own Dharma heirs are now leading Zen communities in Japan, America, and many other parts of the world.

Kōun Yamada made a little-noticed debut in a Western-language publication, The Three Pillars of Zen, which he compiled and translated with Akira Kubota (now Ji’un Roshi, current head of Sanbo Kyodan) and Philip Kapleau. Published under the latter’s name in 1965, that book, which has now come to be a staple in Zen reading in the West, included an account of Kōun Yamada’s Zen enlightenment experience (kensho in Japanese). That account was written in 1953 under the by-line of Mr. K.Y, a Japanese executive, age 47. This great man is also referred to by Rick Fields in his seminal work How the Swans Came to the Lake simply as the cigar-smoking hospital administrator who was Yasutani’s disciple.

From 1970 to 1989 living in Japan, I had the unique privilege of being able to practice Zen and receive regular guidance from Yamada Roshi. I continue to look back with profound gratitude to those years I sat in zazen with many others at San-un Zendo, the small Zen hall he had built with his wife, Kazue Yamada, adjacent to their own home, in Kamakura. The zendo was one hour by train southwest of Tokyo. San-un means Three Clouds, referring to the Zen names of the three founding Teachers of the Sanbō Kyōdan, namely, Daiun Harada (Great Cloud), Hakuun Yasutani (White Cloud), and Kōun Yamada (Cultivating Cloud).

The culture and atmosphere at San-un Zendo, the setting where much of what is described in Three Pillars of Zen takes place, was marked early on by an emphasis on the attainment of kensho, an event that without doubt becomes a turning-point in a person’s life of Zen.

However, from the late seventies up to his death in 1989, Yamada Roshi’s teaching gradually shifted in focus, from the Zen enlightenment experience as such, to the personalization and genuine embodiment of this experience in the ongoing life of the true practitioner. So, although the experience of kensho may happen in the flash of an instant, its effective actualization in a person’s daily life is considered to be the never ending task of a lifetime.

Yamada Roshi often noted that of those who may have had such an initial breakthrough experience, some get sidetracked from the path of awakening, as they idealize that experience, memorialize it, and cling to it. Holding on to one’s kensho in this way becomes another kind of attachment that can be much more pernicious than other more mundane kinds. Thus, Yamada Roshi came to place great importance on vigilance in practice and continuing work with koans. Genuine fruit of Zen practice, he repeatedly maintained, is manifested when a human being is able to experience an emptying of one’s ego, and truly live out one’s humanity with a humble heart, at peace with oneself, at peace with the universe, and with a mind of boundless compassion.

It was in this later phase of his teaching career that Yamada Roshi came to address not just matters of practice geared toward attaining enlightenment, but likewise issues of daily life and contemporary society as the context for embodying this enlightenment. These included themes such as world poverty and social injustice, global peace, harmony among religions, and numerous other social and global concerns. The engagement with these issues was for Yamada Roshi a natural outflow of his life of Zen. His was a perspective grounded in the wisdom of seeing things clearly and a deep compassion for all beings in the universe enlightened by this wisdom. This was what he sought to convey to his Zen students. In short, the question of how a Zen practitioner is to live in daily life and relate to events of this world was a recurrent theme in his talks and public comments in this later phase.

Each teisho in The Gateless Gate gives the reader a glimpse into the depth and breadth of the Zen experience and vision of Kōun Yamada Roshi. These talks will no doubt inspire those who are already engaged in Zen practice to a continued deepening of their experience, and also invite those who are not yet so engaged, to perhaps give it a try.

Ruben L.F. Habito (Keiun-ken)

Maria Kannon Zen Center, Dallas, Texas

Preface to the Wisdom Edition

I am very happy that Wisdom Publications has decided to publish this new edition of The Gateless Gate, a collection of teisho by Kōun Yamada Roshi in English. The first edition of the book was printed in 1979, a quarter of a century ago. This book has been and will continue to be a trusted guide to all sincere Zen practitioners who wish to find out their own essential nature following the footpath of Shakyamuni Buddha.

Kōun Yamada Roshi had an experience of great enlightenment in 1953 at the age of forty-six. At one point when he was around seventy years old, I had a chance to talk with him privately, and he showed me a work of his own calligraphy that read, Practice another 30 years. He said that this would be his motto for his own future Zen practice. Thus he taught me that the enlightenment was very important for our Zen practice, but digesting the experience into our daily life was far more important than the experience itself. I was deeply impressed. The teachings in this book can doubtlessly be applied to all people who find themselves on the sincere way of Zen practice.

How could one become a true Zen person? The answer can found in Kōun Yamada Roshi’s teisho on the first case in this book. Please study it diligently.

Kubota Ji’un

President of the Sanbō Kyōdan

Winter 2004

Preface to the Wisdom Edition

Kōun Yamada Roshi was not only my father but also my Zen master for over thirty years. The fact that his Gateless Gate has been appreciated by many Zen practitioners abroad is a source of great joy for me, and also, as it seems, a very significant matter in many ways.

I happened to be with Kōun Yamada Roshi at the very moment of his enlightenment experience. The depth of his enlightenment experience was no doubt equal to those of the great ancient ancestors, called old buddhas, in the history of Zen. Only a person of such clear and deep experience could present the world of enlightenment with the sharpness and unequivocal clarity, not to mention the lucid straightforwardness, seen in this book.

The universality of The Gateless Gate makes it a valuable work in an era when Zen is becoming more and more global. I believe that this new edition of The Gateless Gate will continue to contribute a great deal to spreading the true Buddhist Dharma.

Lastly, let me express my gratitude to Migaku Sato for preparing this new edition and to Josh Bartok, editor at Wisdom Publications, for arranging to publish it.

Masamichi Yamada

Ryōun-ken

Winter 2004

Author’s Preface to the First Edition

It has been several years since I first began presenting English teishō on the second and fourth Saturdays of each month to the non-Japanese members of the San’un Zendo. So far, I have delivered two series of teishō on the Gateless Gate and presently am giving a series on the Blue Cliff Record. This book is the second series of Gateless Gate teishō with a number of additions and changes. I am very happy to have this chance to publish the book through the efforts of Maezumi Roshi and his staff and would like here to offer them my heartfelt thanks.

The entrance into Zen is the grasping of one’s essential nature. It is absolutely impossible, however, to come to a clear understanding of our essential nature by any intellectual or philosophical method. It is accomplished only by the experience of self-realization through zazen. And the koans used in Zen can be seen through only when looked at from the essential point of view. Therefore to the person whose enlightened eye has not been opened, Zen koans seem impractical, illogical, and against common sense. Once this eye has opened, however, all koans express natural matters and relate the most obvious of realities.

The individual cases of the Gateless Gate are each famous in their own right and are immediately comprehendible to persons who have had a true enlightenment. I think such persons will be able to read this book with great interest. For those lacking this experience, however, the koan will probably seem like gibberish. Nonetheless, even a person with no Zen realization who reads on with patience will experience an upwelling of desire to see the Zen world with his or her own eyes. This is greatly to be welcomed; indeed, an important function of these teishō lies in promoting this urge.

It is no exaggeration to say that Zen is on the verge of completely dying out here in Japan. Some people may think I am stretching the point, but, sad to say, this is the actual state of affairs. How have things come to such a state? I believe we can offer two main reasons for this. First, there is the fact that teachers have sometimes confirmed as kensho the obviously incomplete experience of their students. The responsibility for this lies not with the student but with the teacher. The task of determining whether or not a certain experience is a true Zen realization is a grave responsibility and rests solely in the hands of the person assuming guidance. Should the Zen realization of the teacher not be clear and that person use his or her own incomplete experience as the basis for determining the realization of another, the result is the confirmation of an incomplete experience as kensho. We have here a case of the blind leading the blind.

The second stems from the Zen teacher not truly realizing that the Zen path is endless and that, no matter how far one progresses along it, there is always a limitless beyond. Although in a state of incomplete enlightenment, these teachers are satisfied with having completed koan study in the room, and they lose the brave and determined spirit necessary for the continued striving toward a pure and stainless state of Buddhahood.

I have inherited the teachings and Dharma line of Harada Daiun Roshi. This line extends from Harada Daiun (Great Cloud) Roshi through Yasutani Haku‘un (White Cloud) Roshi on down to myself, Yamada Kōun (Plowing Cloud). The three un in these names are the three clouds from which we derive the name of our dōjō (training hall), the San’un (Three Clouds) Zendo.

Both Harada Roshi and Yasutani Roshi stressed the extreme importance of the kensho experience. I feel this to have been both an alarm sounded against the decline in the significance accorded to kensho in the modern current of Zen and a manifestation of the great compassion of the bodhisattvas to save all sentient creatures. I earnestly pray that the present work will in no way harm the true Zen Buddhism transmitted to me by these two great masters. As the same time, I pray that it will provide some inspiration for a number of its readers earnestly to seek the way of Zen.

In closing, I would like to thank Ms. Brigitte D’Ortschy and Sister Elaine Maclnnes, who provided so much valuable advice and assistance toward making my imperfect English a more complete product, and Ms. Joan Rieck and Mr. Paul Shepherd, who took time from busy schedules to type and make corrections and suggestions in the manuscript and proofs.

Yamada Kōun

San’un Zendo

Kamakura, July 1979

Note on Chinese and Japanese Therms

For ease of reference and pronunciation, proper and place names have been given in Japanese instead of Chinese throughout the text of the Gateless Gate, e.g., Zen rather than Ch’an. The historical Introduction and the vertical lineage charts give both Japanese and Chinese readings, the latter in parentheses, e.g., Mumon Ekai (Wu-men Hui-k’ai). The glossaries at the end of the book give complete correlations, Japanese to Chinese and Chinese to Japanese. Because of their increasing familiarity and frequency of use and their specific meaning, the following terms have been regarded as English words and, accordingly, have been left untranslated and unitalicized: koan, mondo, roshi, zazen, kensho, and satori. For the reader new to Zen parlance, the sense of these terms is explained in the Foreword, Author’s Preface, Preface by Father Enomiya-Lassalle, and the Introduction by Thomas Cleary.

In the title of this book the word commentary is used. This is an English translation of the word teishō, which is a technical Buddhist term in Japanese for a direct expression of the Buddha mind. In its strictest sense, teishō are nondualistic and are thus distinguished from Dharma talks, which are ordinary lectures on Buddhist topics. It is not explanatory or analytical in intent but a presentation of the awakened state itself. The word commentary does not do justice to the powerful teishō of Yamada Roshi transcribed and printed here as the Gateless Gate.

Shūan’s Prepace

If it is called gateless, everybody on the great earth will be able to enter within. If it is said that there is no gate, our dear master should not have chosen this title. He dared besides to add several footnotes, which is like putting one hat on top of another. He also urged old Shū to praise it. This would mean to press the sap out of dried-up bamboo and spread it on a children’s book such as this one. Throw it away without waiting for me to throw it away myself. Don’t let even a drop of it fall on the world. Even Usui who gallops a thousand miles would never be able to pursue it.

Written by Shūan Chin Ken at the end of July,

the first year of Jōtei (1228 A.D.).

TEISHO ON SHŪAN’S PREFACE

Shūan Chin Ken is thought to have been born in 1197 A.D., during the reign of Emperor Neisō of the Southern Sung dynasty, and to have died at the age of forty-five in 1241 A.D., during the reign of Emperor Risō.

His family name is Chin, his personal name is Ken, and his courtesy name is Chūwa. Shūan is his Zen name.

It is said that he was precociously bright and passed the government civil service examination at around twenty years of age. He was later appointed to such high government positions as member of the editorial staff for national history in the privy council and as local governor. Shūan is reputed to have been a man of high culture and refined taste, having a special fondness for landscape gardening.

We cannot find any trace of his Zen study in ancient Zen literature, but from this preface we can assume that he must have been a very close acquaintance of Mumon and have had a deep understanding of Zen.

Now let us come back to his preface.

If it is called ‘gateless,’ everybody on the great earth will be able to enter within. If it is said that ‘there is no gate,’ our dear master should not have chosen this title.

What Shūan means is the following:

"Dear Master, you titled the book Gateless Gate. On the one hand you say ‘gateless.’ If there is no gate, everybody will be able to enter within freely. Why is it necessary to preach anything more? That would be nonsense. On the other hand, you say there is a gate. If there is a gate, why do you say, ‘gateless’? Isn’t that unreasonable? Your first words — in other words, the title of the book — must, therefore, be self-contradictory from the beginning."

All koans, including the forty-eight cases in this book, are barriers set up by the Buddhas and the patriarchs of the past. It is impossible for the ordinary person to pass through them. If you want to pass through these barriers, you must realize your own self-nature. This is called self-realization or enlightenment, satori or kensho in Japanese. When you once attain true self-realization, these barriers disappear in an instant as though they were nothing but mirages, and you will find that from the very beginning you have always been in a world where there is neither inside nor outside. That is what gateless means. Therefore, all koans are impassable barriers for those who are unenlightened, but for the enlightened there is no gate at all. They can come in and go out quite freely.

Mumon himself says in his commentary on the first case of this book:

For the practice of Zen, you must pass the barrier set up by the ancient patriarchs of Zen. To attain to marvelous enlightenment, you must completely extinguish all thoughts of the ordinary mind.

What I said earlier is speaking from the point of view of the process by which we progress upwards through the practice of zazen, but when I speak from the point of view of the essential world, all beings are within it from