The Gateless Barrier is generally acknowledged to be the fundamental koan collection in the literature of Zen. Gathered together by Wu-men (Mumon), a thirteenth-century master of the Lin-chi (Rinzai) school, it is composed of forty-eight koans, or cases, each accompanied by a brief comment and poem by Wu-men.
Robert Aitken, one of the premier American Zen masters, has translated Wu-men's text, supplementing the original with his own commentary -- the first such commentary by a Western master -- making the profound truths of Zen Buddhism accessible to serious contemporary students and relevant to current social concerns.
The Gateless Barrier is generally acknowledged to be the fundamental koan collection in the literature of Zen. Gathered together by Wu-men (Mumon), a thirteenth-century master of the Lin-chi (Rinzai) school, it is composed of forty-eight koans, or cases, each accompanied by a brief comment and poem by Wu-men.
Robert Aitken, one of the premier American Zen masters, has translated Wu-men's text, supplementing the original with his own commentary -- the first such commentary by a Western master -- making the profound truths of Zen Buddhism accessible to serious contemporary students and relevant to current social concerns.
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Overview
The Gateless Barrier is generally acknowledged to be the fundamental koan collection in the literature of Zen. Gathered together by Wu-men (Mumon), a thirteenth-century master of the Lin-chi (Rinzai) school, it is composed of forty-eight koans, or cases, each accompanied by a brief comment and poem by Wu-men.
Robert Aitken, one of the premier American Zen masters, has translated Wu-men's text, supplementing the original with his own commentary -- the first such commentary by a Western master -- making the profound truths of Zen Buddhism accessible to serious contemporary students and relevant to current social concerns.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466895461 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 01/12/2016 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 332 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Robert Aitken, Roshi of the Diamond Sangha in Honolulu, is the author of Taking the Path of Zen and The Mind of Clover.
Robert Aitken (1917-2010) was Roshi of the Diamond Sangha in Honolulu and the author of Taking the Path of Zen and The Mind of Clover. His introduction to Zen came in a Japanese prison camp during World War II, after he was captured as a civilian in Guam. R. H. Blyth, author of Zen in English Literature, was imprisoned in the same camp, and in this unlikely setting Aitken began the first of several important apprenticeships. After the war Aitken returned often to Japan to study. He became friends with D. T. Suzuki, and studied with Nagakawa Soen Roshi and Yasutani Hakuun Roshi. In 1959 Robert Aitken and his wife, Anne, established a Zen organization, the Diamond Sangha. Aitken was given the title "Roshi" and authorized to teach by Yamada Koun Roshi in 1974.
Read an Excerpt
The Gateless Barrier
The Wu-Men Kuan (Mumonkan)
By Robert Aitken, Sengai
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright © 1991 Diamond SanghaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-9546-1
CHAPTER 1
Chao-chou's Dog
THE CASE
A monk asked Chao-chou, "Has the dog Buddha nature or not?" Chao-chou said, "Mu."
WU-MEN'S COMMENT
For the practice of Zen it is imperative that you pass through the barrier set up by the Ancestral Teachers. For subtle realization it is of the utmost importance that you cut off the mind road. If you do not pass the barrier of the ancestors, if you do not cut off the mind road, then you are a ghost clinging to bushes and grasses.
What is the barrier of the Ancestral Teachers? It is just this one word "Mu" — the one barrier of our faith. We call it the Gateless Barrier of the Zen tradition. When you pass through this barrier, you will not only interview Chao-chou intimately. You will walk hand in hand with all the Ancestral Teachers in the successive generations of our lineage — the hair of your eyebrows entangled with theirs, seeing with the same eyes, hearing with the same ears. Won't that be fulfilling? Is there anyone who would not want to pass this barrier?
So, then, make your whole body a mass of doubt, and with your three hundred and sixty bones and joints and your eighty-four thousand hair follicles concentrate on this one word "Mu." Day and night, keep digging into it. Don't consider it to be nothingness. Don't think in terms of "has" and "has not." It is like swallowing a red-hot iron ball. You try to vomit it out, but you can't.
Trans. by Norman Waddell
Gradually you purify yourself, eliminating mistaken knowledge and attitudes you have held from the past. Inside and outside become one. You're like a mute person who has had a dream — you know it for yourself alone.
Suddenly Mu breaks open. The heavens are astonished, the earth is shaken. It is as though you have snatched the great sword of General Kuan. When you meet the Buddha, you kill the Buddha. When you meet Bodhidharma, you kill Bodhidharma. At the very cliff edge of birth-and-death, you find the Great Freedom. In the Six Worlds and the Four Modes of Birth, you enjoy a samadhi of frolic and play.
How, then, should you work with it? Exhaust all your life energy on this one word "Mu." If you do not falter, then it's done! A single spark lights your Dharma candle.
Dog, Buddha nature — the full presentation of the whole; with a bit of "has" or "has not" body is lost, life is lost.
Here at the outset of The Gateless Barrier we meet Chao-chou (Joshu), whose koan "Mu" is the foundation of our koan study. He had the longest and one of the most unusual careers of any Zen master. Born in 778, he came to study with Nan-ch'üan (Nansen) when he was only eighteen years old and remained until his old teacher died forty years later. After two years of mourning he set out on a pilgrimage to visit the many eminent teachers of his time. On his departure he is said to have vowed: "If I meet a hundred-year-old person who seeks my guidance I will offer the best teaching I can to that venerable person. If I meet a seven-year-old child who can teach me I will become an ardent disciple of that child." Contrast this vow with Confucian attitudes toward age and youth that prevailed in Chao-chou's time. At age sixty he had freed himself of cultural constrictions as much as anyone can, and had regained his beginner's mind.
Chao-chou maintained his vow for the next twenty years. Wandering from teacher to teacher, he invited them to probe his mind, checking them as well, deepening and clarifying understanding throughout the Zen world. Finally, at eighty, he settled down in a small temple and for the next forty years guided disciples from his wonderfully seasoned understanding, passing away in his hundred and twentieth year.
Throughout his long career Chao-chou taught in a simple manner with just a few quiet words. It is said that a light seemed to play about his mouth as he spoke. Dogen Kigen, who freely criticized many of his ancestors in the Dharma, could only murmur with awe, "Joshu, the Old Buddha." Forty generations of Zen students and more since his time, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, and now people everywhere, have breathed his one word "Mu," evoking the living presence of the Old Buddha himself.
Thus Mu is an arcanum — an ancient word or phrase that successive seekers down through the centuries have focused upon and found to be an opening into spiritual understanding. When you join that stream you have joined hands with countless pilgrims, past, present, future.
In everyday usage the word "Mu" means "does not have" — but if that were Chao-chou's entire meaning, there wouldn't be any Zen. As I mentioned in my comment to his Preface, Wu-men worked hard on Mu for six years. Though he declares that he did not put the cases of his book in any particular order, it nonetheless seems significant that he chose his own first koan as the first for his book. In many Zen Buddhist temples, including our own, the first teisho of every sesshin (retreat) is devoted to Mu. This single syllable turns out to be a mine of endless riches.
The monk's question is about Buddha nature, and Chao-chou's "Mu" in response is a presentation of Buddha nature. Buddha nature is the fundamental subject of Buddhist teaching. It is the nature of our being. Dogen establishes this at the outset of his essay titled "Buddha Nature": "All beings without exception have Buddha Nature. The Tathagata abides without change. This is the lion roar of our great teacher Sakyamuni, turning the Wheel of the Dharma, and it is the head and eyeballs of all Buddhas and all Ancestors."
"Tathagata" is another term for Buddha nature, or simply Buddha. This is the essential nature of all beings and, indeed, the universe itself. It is completely empty, yet it is potent with infinitely varied and dynamic possibilities. The monk sitting before Chao-chou cannot acknowledge his own Tathagata. At a very deep level he is asking, "Do I really have Buddha nature as they say?" Chao-chou presents his affirmation with a single word of a single syllable: "Mu."
In his quiet way Chao-chou is also showing the monk how to practice. He is just saying "Mu." This you can take as guide, inspiration, and model. This is your path and, breath by breath, you will realize the Buddhahood that has been yours from the beginning. "Muuuuuu."
Wu-men unpacks Chao-chou's "Mu" for us most compassionately in his comment, giving one of the few expositions in classic Zen literature of the actual process of zazen up to and including realization. Phrase by phrase it opens the Way. "For the practice of Zen," he begins, "it is imperative that you pass through the barrier set up by the Ancestral Teachers." The oldest meaning of "barrier" in English, and in Chinese and Japanese as well, is "checkpoint at a frontier." There is only an imaginary mark on the earth to distinguish, say, the United States from Canada, yet our two countries have placed checkpoints along its length. There is no line in your essential nature to distinguish insight from ignorance, but in Zen Buddhist practice someone in a little house by the road will say: "Let me see your credentials. How do you stand with yourself? How do you stand with the world?" You present yourself and are told: "Okay, you may pass" or "No, you may not pass."
The barrier is an archetypal element of human growth — an obstacle to be surmounted by heroes and heroines from time immemorial. It is said that Bodhidharma, revered as the founder of Zen in China, faced the wall of his cave in zazen for the last nine years of his life, though he had long ago found that wall, that barrier, to be altogether transparent. For his part, the Buddha saw through his barrier when he happened to glance up and notice the morning star. Down through the ages there have been countless Buddhas whose barrier turned out to be wide open after all. You too face that barrier. Confirm it as your own.
"For subtle realization," Wu-men continues, "it is of the utmost importance that you cut off the mind road." This is not an injunction to cut off thoughts. As Yasutani Haku'un Roshi used to say, "It is probably possible to control the brain so that no thoughts arise, but that would be an inert state in which no creativity is possible." Wu-men's point is that if you try to cut off thoughts and feelings you might be able to reach a dead space as Yasutani Roshi suggests. Or, more likely, thoughts and feelings will defeat your efforts and come flooding through, and you'll be desperately trying to plug the dike. Such an endeavor brings only despair. Inevitably you notice that you are thinking something as you sit there on your cushions in zazen. Remember Mu at such a time. Notice and remember; notice and remember — a very simple, yet very exacting, practice.
Of course, this practice is not intended as a denial of thoughts and feelings. Even anger can be positive and instructive if it is simply a wave that washes through. Thoughts and feelings have a positive role in zazen, too, for they serve as reminders, just like bird song. Quoting Tung-shan Liangchieh (Tozan Ryokai):
And you begin again. Noticing and remembering, noticing and remembering, gradually you become big with Mu — all things become big with Mu. Fantasies, plans, and sensations become absorbed in Mu. Mu breathes Mu. The whole universe breathes Mu.
Thoughts will come back. But no matter how important and instructive they may seem, ignore their content and significance, and persevere with your Mu. Let thoughts or sounds or sensations remind you to come back to Mu. Pay attention to Mu the way you would to a loved one, letting everything else go.
The barrier is Mu, but it always has a personal frame. For some the barrier is "Who am I really?" and that question is resolved through Mu. For others it is "What is death?" and that question too is resolved through Mu. For me it was "What am I doing here?" For many students it is Sakyamuni's question, "Why should there be suffering in the world?" The discursive words in such questions just take the inquirer around and around in the brain. With Mu — the single word of a single syllable — the agonizing interrogatives "who?" "why?" and "what?" are not answered in any literal sense, but they are certainly resolved.
"If you do not pass the barrier of the ancestors," says Wu-men, "if you do not cut off the mind road, then you are a ghost clinging to bushes and grasses." The ghost is one who can't let go. "Bushes" and "grasses" are shorthand for the many fixations that provide the ghost with identity — such as money and possessions, old resentments, and persistent habits of thought. We are all ghosts after all!
"What is the barrier of the Ancestral Teachers? It is just this one word 'Mu' — the one barrier of our faith. We call it the Gateless Barrier of the Zen tradition." Beyond the Zen tradition, a single word of a single syllable is a perennial theme of focused meditation. The author of The Cloud of Unknowing, a fourteenth-century manual of Christian mysticism, declares, "Short prayer pierces Heaven." Cry out "Mu" in your heart the way you would cry "Fire!" if you awakened with your house ablaze. In The Cloud of Unknowing we find:
And just as this little word "fire" stirs and pierces the Heavens more quickly, so does a little word of one syllable do the same when it is not only spoken or thought, but secretly intended in the depths of the spirit. This depth is height, for spiritually all is one, height and depth, length and breadth. It pierces the ears of Almighty God more than does any psalter thoughtlessly muttered in one's teeth. This is the reason it is said that short prayer pierces Heaven.
Buddhists might not resonate with "Almighty God" as a useful metaphor. One of my students complained to me that his Alcoholics Anonymous program required him to place his trust in a higher power. "As a Buddhist, how can I do that?" he asked. We were standing at the window of the Castle Memorial Hospital in rural O'ahu where he was undergoing treatment. I pointed out the window at the Ko'olau Mountains towering above the hospital. Mountains have stupendous power, the power of things-as-they-are. The one who cries out "Fire!" in a burning house is gathered and all of a piece — like a mountain, like the cardinal that celebrates itself from the telephone wires, or the gecko who calls from the rafters, or the Zen student who breathes "Mu" with skin, flesh, bones, and marrow.
"When you pass through this barrier," Wu-men continues, "you will not only interview Chao-chou intimately. You will walk hand in hand with all the Ancestral Teachers in the successive generations of our lineage — the hair of your eyebrows entangled with theirs, seeing with the same eyes, hearing with the same ears." In this experience, we discover the original realm where we not only practice with our Dharma ancestors, we practice with all beings.
When people write to me from a place where there are no Zen centers and where it is impossible to find even a single Zen friend, I advise them, "Just sit with the awareness that you are sitting with us in the Diamond Sangha. Just sit with the awareness that you are sitting with everyone and every being in the whole universe, past, present, and future." We may not realize it, but we are all of us dwelling together in the original realm — sitting here in the Koko An Zendo, flitting around in the mango-tree branches outside, blowing and spawning in Lahaina Roads, and so on out through a vast multidimensional net of unknown magnitude.
This multidimensional net is not static but exquisitely dynamic — the mutual interdependence of all things and their mutual intersupport, the nature of our world. As philosophy this net forms a beautiful coherence. As experience it is the containment of all beings by me, by the me of you, and there are countless numbers of us. This experience is called "realization," and it is also called "intimacy" — the two words are synonyms in Zen Buddhist literature. You tangle eyebrows with the many ancestors of our lineage and find that you yourself are their mind, the mind which Dogen said is "the mountains, rivers, the earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars." You find that you include them or that they contain you. There is no barrier!
The word "intimate" is ch'in-ch'ieh in Chinese, pronounced shinsetsu in Japanese. Its primary meaning is "apposite" or "to the point." But "having intimate connections" is the significance, and in everyday usage the term means "kind" or "generous" or "warmhearted." If you are invited to someone's home in Japan and you take along a little gift, your hostess will say you are very shinsetsu — you are very kind and your conduct is just right. But implicit in that word is the message that you are intimate. So you can see, through etymology, how the Buddha Dharma of Interbeing is manifested in daily life. Wisdom and intimacy are actually the same thing.
As a Zen student you are challenged to find this intimacy in the ordinary, workaday, confrontive society you live in. How can you see with another's eyes, or hear with another's ears, across space and time or even face to face at the post office? If you steadfastly breathe "Mu" right through all feelings of anxiety when you are on your cushions, and if you ignore distractions and devote yourself to the matter at hand on other occasions, you will be like Pu-tung (Fudo) holding fast in the flames of hell. Those flames are the distressing aspects of your life, and in persevering you will surely enter the original realm.
"Won't that be fulfilling? Is there anyone who would not want to pass this barrier?" Wu-men is inviting his ponies with a carrot. Be careful. Mu is only the first of the koans, and passing all the koans is only a good beginning. One peep into essential nature is a great release and a great encouragement, but if you take it as be-all and end-all, you'll drop straight back into hell.
"So, then, make your whole body a mass of doubt, and with your three hundred and sixty bones and joints and your eighty-four thousand hair follicles concentrate on this one word 'Mu.'" When students asked Yamada Koun Roshi, "What is the 'great doubt' that Zen teachers are always urging upon us?" he said, "Great doubt is the condition of being one with Mu." Very simple. There's no need to manufacture doubt or to create it from outside. It's right here: What is Mu?
Wu-men uses Sung dynasty terms to convey this point. "Three hundred and sixty bones and joints and eighty-four thousand hair follicles" may not be accurate modern physiology, but as metaphors they illumine the Tao of complete physical and mental absorption in Mu. This Tao is a perennial human process found here in Zen — a path to understanding that is sought one direction or another in all world religions.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Gateless Barrier by Robert Aitken, Sengai. Copyright © 1991 Diamond Sangha. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Epigraph,
Illustrations,
Acknowledgments,
Introduction,
Preface,
CASE 1: Chao-chou's Dog,
CASE 2: Pai-chang's Fox,
CASE 3: Chü-chih Raises One Finger,
CASE 4: Huo-an's Beardless Barbarian,
CASE 5: Hsiang-yen: Up a Tree,
CASE 6: The World-Honored One Twirls a Flower,
CASE 7: Chao-chou: "Wash Your Bowl",
CASE 8: Hsi-chung Builds Carts,
CASE 9: Ch'ing-jang's Nonattained Buddha,
CASE 10: Ch'ing-shui: Solitary and Destitute,
CASE 11: Chao-chou and the Hermits,
CASE 12: Jui-yen Calls "Master",
CASE 13: Te-shan: Bowls in Hand,
CASE 14: Nan-ch'üan Kills the Cat,
CASE 15: Tung-shan's Sixty Blows,
CASE 16: Yün-men: The Sound of the Bell,
CASE 17: Kuo-shih's Three Calls,
CASE 18: Tung-shan's Three Pounds of Flax,
CASE 19: Nan-ch'üan: "Ordinary Mind Is the Tao",
CASE 20: Sung-yüan's Person of Great Strength,
CASE 21: Yün-men's Dried Shitstick,
CASE 22: Mahakasyapa's Flagpole,
CASE 23: Hui-neng: "Neither Good Nor Evil",
CASE 24: Feng-hsüeh: Equality and Differentiation,
CASE 25: Yang-shan's Sermon from the Third Seat,
CASE 26: Fa-yen: Two Monks Roll Up the Blinds,
CASE 27: Nan-ch'üan: "Not Mind, Not Buddha, Not Beings",
CASE 28: Lung-t'an: Renowned Far and Wide,
CASE 29: Hui-neng: "Not the Wind; Not the Flag",
CASE 30: Ma-tsu: "This Very Mind Is Buddha",
CASE 31: Chao-chou Investigates the Old Woman,
CASE 32: The Buddha Responds to an Outsider,
CASE 33: Ma-tsu: "Not Mind, Not Buddha",
CASE 34: Nan-ch'üan: Mind and Buddha,
CASE 35: Wu-tsu: "Which Is the True Ch'ien?",
CASE 36: Wu-tsu: Meeting Someone Attained in the Tao,
CASE 37: Chao-chou: The Oak Tree in the Courtyard,
CASE 38: Wu-tsu's Buffalo Passes Through the Window,
CASE 39: Yün-men: "You Have Misspoken",
CASE 40: Kuei-shan Kicks Over the Water Bottle,
CASE 41: Bodhidharma Pacifies the Mind,
CASE 42: Mañjusri and the Young Woman in Samadhi,
CASE 43: Shou-shan's Short Bamboo Staff,
CASE 44: Pa-chiao's Staff,
CASE 45: Wu-tsu: "Who Is That Other?",
CASE 46: Shih-shuang: "Step from the Top of the Pole",
CASE 47: Tou-shuai's Three Barriers,
CASE 48: Kan-feng's One Road,
Wu-men's Postscript,
Wu-men's Cautions,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Appendix I: The Traditional Lineage,
Appendix II: Chinese-Japanese Equivalents,
Appendix III: Japanese-Chinese Equivalents,
Glossary,
About the Author,
What People are Saying About This
Aitken Roshi poses these koans in a manner accessible to Westerners through his depiction of his personal struggles with them (as a student) and his approach to them as a teacher. His commentary allows the transformative power of this traditional koan collection to come alive for modern students.
—
author of Everyday Zen.
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