The Gateless Gate

It seems that the only good way to write about a koan is to produce another koan.  At least, this is what you might conclude from the format of this classic collection of Zen koans and commentary.  Obviously I'm not up to that task, so you'll have to settle for some more standard Western conceptual fare here.

Mumokan composed The Gateless Gate in 1228.  He collected 48 koans from various sources that he was using as a teaching aid and added a bit of his own cryptic commentary and a short poem to each.  I'd imagine there are many translations of this base work into English, but the one I read was made in 1979 by Yamada Koun.  Like Mumokan, since he was using the series of koans as a means of instruction, he added his own commentary.  It's a lot less cryptic than Mumokan's, but of course he is still faced with the same basic problem that the core goal is to use words to go beyond words.  

Despite this, I learned a ton about the particularities of the Zen mindset from the book.  In fact, I find myself drawn to this type of mystical non-dual practice.  It has a much looser feel than other Buddhist sects' obsession with lists and precepts.  As a result, it comes off as much more philosophical as well, probably in part because it resonates with the anti-systematic style of my favorite Western philosophers like Deleuze, Nietzsche, and Spinoza.  The ongoing question is always how to conceive everything as one, and one as everything.  In some sense, the "non-dual" probably refers as much to the duality of the one and the many as it does to the subject and the object, so it's important to read that formula both forwards and backwards.  Yamada begins to make clear that if all the varied events of the phenomenal world share an essential nature, this unity also spontaneously expresses itself as every phenomenal instance.  It's a tricky and paradoxical idea that never lets you rest because it inherently involves a sort of circulation or movement.  Presumably this goes a ways towards accounting for Zen's artistic and literary fecundity.

I haven't really spent much time trying to use the koans as an actual meditation technique.  But I have felt a hint of how this might work by following the advice he gives to simply bring a koan to mind during meditation or even as you go about daily life.  

 

A monk asked Joshu in all earnestness, 'Does a dog have Buddha nature or not?'  Joshu replied, 'Mu!'  

The more I noodle that one, the more I feel it open up like a flower whose beauty I hadn't noticed at first.  Does the funny looking dog sitting in the doorway at Med Mix have Buddha nature right now?  Can you have Buddha nature, or is it something that you are?  How am I different from the dog?  What exactly does negation have to do with emptiness?  Maybe I'll have to update this review when I've got it all figured out.

 

#reread