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Passing Through the Gateless Barrier: Koan Practice for Real Life Free FREE PASSING THROUGH THE GATELESS BARRIER: KOAN PRACTICE FOR REAL LIFE PDF Guo Gu | 304 pages | 31 May 2016 | Shambhala Publications Inc | 9781611802818 | English | Boston, United States Passing Through the Gateless Barrier While D. Suzuki brought the philosophy and culture of Zen Buddhism to America, it was Nyogen Senzaki who taught Zen as a steady, disciplined, unromantic yet transformative path of everyday life. Nyogen Senzaki came to America, in part, because he had become disenchanted with modern Buddhism in Japan. Then after seventeen years, he began to present lectures on Buddhism whenever he could save enough money to rent a hall. He notes that real Zen teachers never give anything; rather, they take away whatever their students are attached to. Nyogen Senzaki died in at the age of He left his manuscripts to his friend Soen Nakagawa Roshi, and he in turn passed them to his dharma successor, Eido Roshi. Get even more Buddhist wisdom delivered straight to your inbox! Zen has no gates. Now, how does one pass through this gateless gate? There is a saying that whatever enters through the gate is not the family treasure. Whatever is produced by the help of another will dissolve and perish. The young stage of a religious mind always lingers around such an idea. One thus has to have a Supreme Being, and the agency of prophets. The compilers of old scriptures had to work hard to satisfy those childish minds, and thus stitched together the ragged pieces of old traditions and legends. Zen has nothing to do with such antiquities. You are here to meditate only because you want to know your true self. No agent of a Supreme Being provoked you to come. No scriptures enticed you to study meditation. Therefore, the essence of the teaching has no particular form or mold. In his time, all students of Buddhism understood that Zen is the essence of Buddhism, not a school or a sect of it. I am a senior student to you all, but I have nothing to impart to you. Whatever I have is mine, and never will be yours. You may consider me stingy and unkind, but I do not wish you to produce something that will dissolve and perish. I want each of you to discover your own inner treasure. Even such words are like raising waves in a windless sea or performing surgery upon a healthy body. If you cling to what others have said, and try to understand Zen through explanations, it is as though you are trying to hit the moon with a pole, or scratch your itchy foot from the outside of your shoe. It is not at all possible. Those who understand Zen need not listen to Mumon or anyone else. But most students have something lurking in their minds, something that is bound to become a harmful parasite: a feeling of dependence upon others for their own growth. These students need sharp and emphatic encouragement, not soft and kind words. I will offer it here and stop raising waves in a calm sea, or performing surgery upon a sound body. In the yearI was giving Dharma discourses to Passing Through the Gateless Barrier: Koan Practice for Real Life monks in the temple of Ryusho, City of Toka, in the Province of Onshu, and at their request I retold old koans, endeavoring to inspire their Zen spirit. I meant to use the koans Passing Through the Gateless Barrier: Koan Practice for Real Life one uses a piece of brick to knock at a gate: after the gate is opened, the brick is useless and is thrown away. Unexpectedly, however, my notes were collected as a group of forty-eight koans, together with my comments in prose and verse on each, although their arrangement was not in the order in which I spoke about them. I have titled the book the Mumonkan Gateless Gateand offer it to students to read as a guide. If you are brave enough and go straight ahead in meditation, you will not be disturbed by delusions. You will attain Zen just as did Passing Through the Gateless Barrier: Koan Practice for Real Life ancient masters of India and China; perhaps even more so. The great Way has no gate; Thousands of roads enter it. When one passes through the gateless gate, One walks freely throughout heaven and earth. Soon we will begin a week of seclusion in commemoration of Bodhidharma, from the third of October to the ninth. This is a fine opportunity for all of you to practice Zen with self-determination. Let us see what we can do for attainment. Many masters in China and Japan entered Zen through this gate. Do not think that it is easy just because it is the first. A koan is the thesis of the postgraduate course in Buddhism. Each koan is the key of emancipation. Once you are freed from your fetters, you do not need the key anymore. The wonderful power of emancipation! It is applied in countless ways—in limitless ways. One should make four kinds of offerings for this power. If you want to pay for it, A million gold Passing Through the Gateless Barrier: Koan Practice for Real Life are not enough. If you sacrifice everything you have, it cannot cover your debts. Only a few words from your realization are payment in full, Even for the debts of the remote past. The great Chinese Zen master Joshu always spoke his Zen, using a few choice words, instead of hitting or shaking his students as other teachers did. I know that students who cling to worldly sentiments do not like Passing Through the Gateless Barrier: Koan Practice for Real Life rough manner of Zen. Each sentient being has buddhanature. This dog must have one. So you think of the manifestation of buddhanature as a dog. Get out! Whatever you say is just the shadow of your conceptual thinking. Whatever you conceive of is a figment of your imagination. Now, tell me, has a dog buddhanature or not? You are not an independent person if you do not pass this barrier. You cannot walk freely throughout heaven and earth. You may ask, what is the barrier set up by the patriarchs? This one word, Mu, is it. This is the barrier of Zen. If you pass through it, you will see Joshu face-to-face. Then you can walk hand in hand with the whole line of patriarchs. Is this not a wondrous thing? If you want to pass this barrier, you must work so that every bone in your body, every pore of your skin, is filled through and through with this question, What is Mu? You must carry it day and night. Just carry the koan, and ignore all contending thoughts. They will disappear soon, leaving you alone in samadhi. Do not believe Mu is the common negative. It is not nothingness as the opposite of existence. Joshu did not say the dog has buddhanature. He did not say the dog has no buddhanature. He only pointed directly to your own buddhanature! If you really want to pass this barrier, you should feel as though you have a hot iron ball in your throat that you can Passing Through the Gateless Barrier: Koan Practice for Real Life swallow nor spit up. Then your previous conceptualizing disappears. Like a fruit ripening in season, subjectivity and objectivity are experienced as one. You are like a dumb person who has had a dream. You know it, but you cannot speak about it. When you enter this condition, your ego-shell is crushed, and you can shake the heavens and move the earth. You are like a great warrior with a sharp sword. Neither Japan nor China has such a warrior; therefore they have to fight each other. This is an expression in Chinese rhetoric, meaning once you become a buddha, you have no more use for buddha. Some Japanese blockhead could not understand such a peculiar expression, and many other quaint Chinese terms as well, and took them all as invitations to stir hatred. This is one of the causes of the conflict between China and Japan. Ignorance is not bliss; it is a terrible thing. You will walk freely through birth and death. You can enter any place as if it were your own playground. I will tell you how to do this. Just concentrate all your energy into Mu, and do not allow any discontinuity. When you enter Mu and there is no discontinuity, your attainment will be like a candle that illuminates the whole universe. Discontinuity may be allowed at first while you are engaged in your everyday work, but when you are meditating in the zendo or in your home, you must carry on with this koan, minute after minute, bravely. Our seclusion week is an opportunity for Passing Through the Gateless Barrier: Koan Practice for Real Life to engage in this sort of adventure. Why Can’t the Tail Pass Through? - Michael Stone Teachings The Gateless Gate. Wu-wen kuan; Jap. English Translation. Original Chinese Text. The original Chinese text is taken from the following Japanese web site:. Chinese Characters. Unfortunately a few Chinese characters were not Passing Through the Gateless Barrier: Koan Practice for Real Life in this site. Where there was a definition about these ideograms, they are entered them using Chinese system Big 5. There are also ideograms that appear as mere black boxes, without any explanations. These are replaced with dummy characters empty square boxes. Wu-wen kuan Mumonkan.
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