The Gateless Barrier: The Wu-Men Kuan (Mumonkan) 0865474419, 0865474427, 9780865474413

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ALSO BY ROBERT AITKEN

The Dragon Who Never Sleeps Larkspur Press, 1990

The Mind of Clover North Point Press, 1984

Taking the Path of Zen North Point Press, 1982

A Zen Wave Weatherhill, 1978

The Gateless Barrier THE WU-MEN KUAN (MUMONKAN)

Translated and with a Commentary by

Robert Aitken Illustrations by Sengai

1990

NORTH POINT PRESS

San Francisco

Copyright © 1991 by Diamond Sangha Printed in the United States of America The paintings by Sengai are reproduced by permission of The Idemitsu Museum of Arts. Chapters of this book appeared in earlier versions in Blind Donkey and The EaJtern Buddhist, new series. Cover design: David Bullen Cover illustration: Bodhidharma, by Sengai, courtesy of The Idemitsu Museum of Arts

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Aitken, Robert, 1917The gateless barrier: the Wu-men kuan (Mumonkan) I translated and with a commentary by Robert Aitken ; illustrations bySengai. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-86547-441-9. -ISBN 0-86547-442-7 (pbk.) 1. Hui-k'ai, 1183-126o. Wu-menkuan. 2. Koan. I. Title. BQ9289.H843A36 1990 294.3'4-dc20 90-48970

North Point Press 850 Talbot Avenue Berkeley, California 94706

TO THE LIVING PRESENCE OF YAMADA KOUN-KEN RODAISHI

Bamboo shadows sweep the stairs but no dust is stirred; moonlight reaches to the bottom of the pond but no trace is left in the water. Zenrinkushii

Contents Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Preface CASE l: Chao-chou's Dog Pai-chang's Fox CASE 2: Chii-chih Raises One Finger CASE 3: Huo-an's Beardless Barbarian CASE4: Hsiang-yen: Upa Tree CASE 5: The World-Honored One Twirls a Flower CASE6: Chao-chou: "Wash Your Bowl" CASE7: Hsi-chung Builds Carts CASE 8: Ch 'ing-jang's Nonattained Buddha CASE9: CASE 10: Ch'ing-shui: Solitary and Destitute CASE l 1: Chao-chou and the Hermits CASE 12: jui-yenCalls"Master" CASE 13: Te-shan: Bowls in Hand CASE 14: Nan-ch'iian Kills the Cat CASE lY Tung-shan 's Sixty Blows CASE 16: Y iin-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'iian: "Ordinary Mind Is the Tao" CASE 20: Sung-yiian's Person of Great Strength CASE 21: Yiin-men's Dried Shitstick CASE 22: Mahakafyapa's Flagpole CASE 23: Hui-neng: "Neither Good Nor Evil" CASE24: Feng-hsiieh: Equality and Differentiation

IX XI XIII

3 7 19 28 33 38 46 54 60 64 70 76 81 88 94 100 107 l I3 120 126 132 137 142 147 155

Contents

VIII

Yang-shan's Sermon from the Third Seat CASE 26: Fa-yen: Two Monks Roll Up the Blinds CASE 27: Nan-ch'iian: "Not Mind, Not Buddha, Not Beings" CASE 28: Lung-t'an: Renowned Farand 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'iian: Mind and Buddha CASE 35: Wu-tsu: "Which ls 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: Yiin-men: "You Have Misspoken" CASE40: Kuei-shan Kicks Over the Water Bottle CASE41: Bodhidharma Pacifas the Mind CASE42: Mafljufri and the Young Woman in Samadhi CASE43: Shou-shan's Short Bamboo Staff CASE44: Pa-chiao's Staff CASE45: Wu-tsu: "Who Is That Other?" CASE46: Shih-shuang: "Step from the Top of the Pole" CASE47: Tou-shuai's Three Barriers CASE48: 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 CASE 25:

160 166 171 177 184 189 195 199 204 208 213 221 226 231 235 241 248 255 261 265 269 273 278 283 287 288 291 311 315 321 329 331

Illustrations BY SENGAI

A Dog and Its Buddha Nature(Case 1) PLATE 2. Pai-chang and the Fox (Case 2) PLATE 3. Hsiang-yen Sweeps the Grounds (Case 5) PLATE4. Nan-ch'uanandtheCat(Case 14) PLATE 5. Hung-jenandHui-neng(Cases 23 and 29) PLATE 6. Lung-t'an andTe-shan (Case 28) PLATE 7. Bodhidhanna (C2.Ses4 and 41) PLATE 8. The Bodhisattva Mafljufri(Cases 25 and 42) PLATE 1.

8 20

40

96 148 178 242

256

Acknowledgments I could not even have dreamed of serving as a teacher of Zen Buddhism or of making this book if Yamada Koun Roshi had not guided me through Zen practice, both formally as a teacher and informally as a companion and friend. I am endlessly grateful to him for his compassion and wisdom. My translation grew out of earlier versions made with Yamada Roshi and Katsuki Sekida.' I owe a large debt to Yamada Roshi and to Shibayama Zenkei Roshi for their published commentaries on the Wu-men kuan, which have kept me on course. 2 I am grateful to the abbots Reb Anderson and Mel Weitsman of the Zen Centerof San Francisco, the staff and members of Green Gulch Zen Farm, and Yvonne Rand and William Sterling for their hospitality during a three-month sabbatical that gave me time and freedom from other responsibilities to work on my commentaries. My old-time student Nelson Foster edited the outcome and brought a measure of coherence to my meanderings. Craig Twentyman and Anne Aitken read earlier drafts and made a great many helpful suggestions. Anne also took over many of my other responsibilities when I was glued to my desk. Johanna Bangeman typed and retyped and helped with the appendixes. Carl Varady gave me technical assistance and suggested useful references. Students at the Koko An Zendo, the Maui Zendo, and the Green Gulch Zen Farm offered useful ideas when I read parts of the manuscript to their classes. Others who helped in important ways were: David Chappell, Trish Dougherty, Shokin Furuta, Glenn James, Barbara Newton, Shigeru Ohsuka, George Tanabe, Kazuaki Tanahashi, and Norman Waddell. I am especially grateful to Jack Shoemaker, Dave Bullen, Barbara Ras, and the staff of North Point Press for their competence and creativity in making this book.

XII

Acknowledgments

In citing quotations, I frequently refer to translations by D. T. Suzuki, Thomas Cleary, C. Y. Chang, Kazuaki lanahashi, and others. I work from less accessible texts as well, however, and the translations often differ from those cited. These texts include some that are published with English translation, like Ruth Fuller S:i.saki's Recorded Sayings vf Ch'an Master Linchi,' and also such studies in Japanese as the dokugo of Yasutani Haku'un Roshi, • the modernized Shobogenzo edited by the Honzanban Shukusatsu,' the various commentaries listed in the bibliography, works in the Zen no Goroku series,6 as well as other Japanese scholarly studies, and manuscript translations prepared with Yamada Roshi. Palolo Zen Center Spring Training Period, I 990

Introduction The Gate/ess Barrier is a collection of stories and verses chat present fundamental perspectives on life and no-life, the nature of the self, the relationship of the self co the earth-and how these interweave.Such stories and verses are called koans, and their study is the process of realizing their truths. What may be known abstractly becomes personal, a vital experience of one's own. For example: the notion of transcendental oneness becomes a vivid experience of a shared and unbounded nature, and the thought of compassion is felt profoundly in a way that is consistent with its etymology: "suffering with ochers." Classic koans have proved effective over the centuries and millennia in recording-and evoking-especially illuminating experiences of such fundamentals.' Koans are not riddles or puzzles whose crick is in their clever and obscure wording. They are the clearest possible expression of perennial faces which students grasp with focused meditation and guidance. The original interactions chat became koans were challenges co students by their teachers (and vice versa) in old China. Hui-neng asked the head monk Ming about his original face, for example, and Ming realized something imporcant. 2 Some one hundred and seventy-five years lacer, Kuei-shan asked Hsiang-yen about his original face before his parents were born. Hsiang-yen didn't understand the question at the time, but it cooked as a koan in his psyche and lacer he too realized something imporcant. 3 The question Hui-neng asked Ming was amplified a bit in the trial-and-error process of becoming a koan. This process of amplifying and codifying along with creating new koans continued down through the centuries co Sung times (960-1279), when several collections of koans, including this one, were assembled and published. Koan study developed separately in the two great Buddhist traditions

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Introduction

that became Rinzai and Soto Zen. Rinzai teachers, culminating with Hakuin, tended to systematize koans into a kind of curriculum, while the Soto teachers tended to pick and choose koans for each particular student. Today koan study survives in the Rinzai school, but it is no longer used in the Soto. In the early part of this century, the Soto monk Harada Sogaku (Dai'un) broke with his tradition by studying with the Rinzai master Toyoda Dokutan Roshi. Returning to the SOto fold, he established his own way of koan teaching which (after several generations) inspires this present translation and commentary. This way of teaching cannot be said to be either Rinzai or SOto, though it draws from each. It has been called the Harada-Yasutani school, after its first two teachers, and the Sanbo Kyodan (Order of the Three Treasures). Zen study as reestablished by Harada Roshi begins with learning zazen (focused meditation), which I have discussed elsewhere in Taking the Path of Zen and which is also set forth in Yasutani Roshi's "Introductory Lectures on Zen Training."• In consultation with a teacher, perhaps the student who has practiced zazen for a while will elect to begin work on one of the initial koans-usually the word "Mu," set forth in Case 1, or possibly Bassui Tokusho's question, "Who is hearing?'" Such themes are pursued with a keen, inquiring spirit, and the process of resolving them may take a long time, many years in some cases. Finally, the student gains a degree of understanding and is ready for subsequent koans to amplify, clarify, and deepen the original insight. Through this process, we discover that life and death are the same as nolife and no-death; the other is no other than myself; each being is infinitely precious as a unique expression of the nature which is essential to us all. The inspired student seeks to live this reality within the home and outside, making each turn an occasion for further realization and practice of these fundamental facts-perhaps joining with like-minded people for an expression of broad social and environmental concerns. This life practice may have begun before the beginning of formal Zen study. It can continue throughout each of its steps, and there is no end. My comments on the k6ans, like those of my betters, including Wumen in the early thirteenth century, grew out of talks (teishos) given during retreats-in my case to Diamond Sangha students in three cycles over a period of fifteen years. They have been much revised to function as essays

Introduction

xv

while still retaining, I hope, their original flavor as teishos: "presentations of the shout." I use Chinese names for Chinese personages and give Japanese equivalents in parentheses. I use certain Japanese terms like "Zen," "Mu," "teisho," "koan," and "dojo," for these are current and some even appear in modern English dictionaries. At the back of the book I offer a glossary of terms used throughout the text; to make the book more accessible, I have used translated forms of certain Japanese terms that are current in Western Zen centers. Familiar words from the Sanskrit like ''nirvana" and "sutra" are given without diacritical marks. Accents that do not significantly affect the pronunciation of words for English readers are omitted. An acute accent over the letters in Sanskrit words, as in Sakyamuni, is pronounced sh. The macron over a vowel in Sanskrit and Japanese gives emphasis and length to that syllable, as in dana. Chinese pronunciations are difficult, and neither the traditional WadeGiles nor the modern pinyin romanizations do the original much justice. Here I have used the Wade-Giles system, as it is more familiar, and give the pinyin version in the Equivalency Tables (Appendixes II and Ill). When the twn are compared, an approximation of the true pronunciation can emerge. The Lineage Charts (Appendix I) are arranged to show teachers by generation, and the important names in the Equivalency Tables are keyed to the charts to show generation numbers. Suggested readings and references are provided in the Bibliography. Many of them are out of print-try your library and if necessary request an interlibrary loan. Reading supplements instruction and can provide important help in the absence of a teacher.

The Gateless Barrier

Preface

WU-MEN'S PREFACE

The Buddha mind and wordJ point the way; the Gateless Ba"ier is the Dharma entry. There is no gate from the beginning, so how do you pass through it? Haven't you heard that things which come through the gate are not the family treasure? Things gained from causal circumstances have a beginning and an end-formation and destruction. Such talk raises waves where there is no wind and gouges wounds in healthy flesh. How much morefoolish are those who depend upon wordJ andseek understanding by their intellect! They try to hit the moon with a stick. They scratch their shoes when their feet itch. In the summer ofthe first year ofShao-ting,' I was head ofthe assembly al Lunghsiang in Tung-chia. When the monks askedfor instruction, I took up koans ofancient teachers and used them as brickbats to batter at the gate, guiding the monks in accord with their various capacities. I recorded these cases and thus, without my intending it, they have become a collection. I did not arrange the koans in any particular order. There are forty-eight cases in all, and I call the collection The Gateless Barrier.

The person of coura~e unflinchingly cuts straight through the barrier, unhindered even by Nata, the eight-armed demon king. In the presence of such valor, the twenty-eight Indian ancestors and six Chinese ancestors beg for their lives. If you hesitate, however, you'll be like someone watching a horse gallop past a window. ~'ith a blink, it is gone.

4

The Gateless Barrier

WU-MEN'S VERSE

The Great Way has no gate; there are a thousand different paths; once you pass through the barrier, you walk the universe alone.

Wu-men (Mumon) Hui-k'ai was a Sung period masterof the Lin-chi (Rinzai) school who lived from l 183 to 1260. He worked on the koan "Mu" ardently for six years, sometimes, it is said, pacing the corridors at night and knocking his head intentionally against the pillars. One day he heard the drum announcing the noon meal-and suddenly, like the Buddha seeing the morning star, he had a profound experience of understanding. His poem on that occasion reads: A thunderclap under the clear blue sky; all beings on earth open their eyes; everything under heaven bows together; Mount Sumeru leaps up and dances. After receiving transmission from his master, Yiieh-lin (Gatsurin), Wu-men wandered as a teacher from temple to temple, never settling long in one place. Toward the end of his life, he retired to a hermitage but was regularly disturbed by visitors seeking guidance. An unconventional Zen master in many respects, Wu-men let his hair and beard grow and wore old soiled robes. He worked in the fields and carried his own slops. Called "Hui-k'ai the Lay Monk," he is a wonderful archetype for us monkish lay people in the West. 2 Wu-men's Preface is straightforward and needs little comment: "Things which come through the gate" are those, as the next line indicates, that have a beginning and an end-fame and fortune, for example. These are not the family treasure. What is the family treasure? I think Wu-men is talking about human vision and human fulfillment, not anything grandiose. In Stevenson's "The Poor Thing," a fisherman proposes marriage to the daughter of an earl by saying, "Come, behold a vision of our children, the busy hearth, and the white heads. And let that suffice, for it is all God offers." J Zen prac-

Preface

5

tice shows us how to cherish what we are and what we have-and what the earth is and has. "You'll be like someone watching a horse gallop past a window. With a blink it is gone." Quick as a wink, you'll find that life has passed you bygrasp the chance before you now! Wu-men's verse begins: "The Great Way has no gate"-as broad as the world, with no barriers! "There are a thousand different paths"-every event is a path on that Great Way: the advice of a friend, the song of the thrush in the early morning, the smell of rain in dusty fields. D. T. Suzuki translates the last line "in royal solitude you walk the universe,'' which adds a word to the original and indicates the pleasure of such solitu