Guo Gu - Passing Through the Gateless Barrier: Kōan Practice for Real Life

A very helpful guide to the investigation of the Zen kan from a perspective not yet widely known in the West. Guo Gu (Professor Jimmy Yu) is a worthy heir to the great Chan master Sheng Yen. He provides lucid comments on each of the cases in the classic kan collection, the Gateless Gate, inviting us into our own intimate encounter with Zens ancestors and our own personal experience of the great matter of life and death. Anyone interested in understanding what a kan really is, how it can be used, and how it uses us, will be informed and enriched by this book. I highly recommend it.

James Ishmael Ford, author of If Youre Lucky, Your Heart Will Break and co-editor of The Book of Mu: Essential Writings on Zens Most Important Koan

Guo Gus translation of The Gateless Barrier and his commentary reveal a fresh, eminently practical approach to the famous text. Reminding again and again that it is the readers own spiritual affairs to which each kan points, Guo Gu writes with both broad erudition and the profound insight of a Chan practitioner; in this way he reveals himself to be a worthy inheritor of his late Master Sheng Yens teachings. Zen students, called upon to give life to these kans within their own practice, will find Passing Through the Gateless Barrier a precious resource.

Meido Moore Roshi, abbot of Korinji Zen Monastery

A fresh, original translation and commentary by a young Chinese teacher in the tradition of Sheng Yen. Finally, a commentary on the Gateless Barrier that can take its place alongside Zenkei Shibayamas classic work.

Jeff Shore, translator of Great Doubt: Practicing Zen in the World

It is such a delight to read this book, a translation of many stories of enlightenment from the ancient Chan masters. Helpful for Chan practitioners as well as a general audience.

Venerable Guo Yuan

ABOUT THE BOOK

Gateways to awakening surround us at every moment of our lives. The whole purpose of kan (gongan, in Chinese) practice is to keep us from missing these myriad opportunities by leading us to certain gates that have traditionally been effective for people to access that marvelous awakening. The forty-eight kans of the Gateless Barrier (Chinese: Wumenguan; Japanese: Mumonkan) have been waking people up for well over eight hundred years. Chan teacher Guo Gu provides here a fresh translation of the classic text, along with the first English commentary by a teacher of the Chinese tradition from which it originated. He shows that the kans in this text are not mere stories from a distant past, but are rather pointers to the places in our lives where we get stuckand that each sticking point, when examined, can become a gateless barrier through which we can enter into profound wisdom.

GUO GU (Dr. Jimmy Yu) is the founder of the Tallahassee Chan Center (www.tallahasseechan.com) and is also the guiding teacher for the Western Dharma Teachers Training course at the Chan Meditation Center in New York and the Dharma Drum Lineage. He is one of the late Master Sheng Yens (19302009) senior and closest disciples, and assisted him in leading intensive retreats throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. Guo Gu has edited and translated a number of Master Sheng Yens books from Chinese to English. He is also a professor of Buddhism and East Asian religions at Florida State University, Tallahassee.

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PASSING THROUGH THE GATELESS BARRIER

Kan Practice for Real Life

GUO GU

SHAMBHALA

BOULDER

2016

FRONTISPIECE: Calligraphy of Wu Men Guan

(Gateless Barrier) by Tianshi Kun

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

4720 Walnut Street

Boulder, Colorado 80301

www.shambhala.com

2016 by Guo Gu (Jimmy Yu)

Cover calligraphy by Melody Yang

Cover design by Katrina Noble

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

eISBN: 978-0-8348-4017-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Huikai, 11831260, author. / Guo gu, 1968 editor, translator.

Title: Passing through the gateless barrier: kan practice for real life / Guo Gu.

Other titles: Wumen guan. English

Description: First US edition. / Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala, 2016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015030955 / ISBN 9781611802818 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: KoanEarly works to 1800. / BISAC: RELIGION /

Buddhism / Zen (see also PHILOSOPHY / Zen). / RELIGION / Buddhism /

Sacred Writings. / RELIGION / Buddhism / General

(see also PHILOSOPHY / Buddhist).

Classification: LCC BQ9289 .H8413 2016 / DDC 294.3/443dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015030955

This book is dedicated to my teacher, Master Sheng Yen (19302009), and my students. They made this book a reality. Without my teacher I would not have a life. Without my students, life would not have meaning. Special thanks go to Estelle Gerard, who transcribed all the talks diligently and made many editorial suggestions. Without her, this book project would never have started. I also thank Myosen Sprott, Linda Howard, Maria Williams, and Fran Berry for their assistance in preparing the manuscript for my edits. I would also like to thank Liz Shaw and John Golebiewski at Shambhala Publications for editing the manuscript. Finally, my gratitude to all the Chan lineage masters who kept the flames of the Three Jewels alive in successive generations.

This book contains diacritics and special characters. If you encounter difficulty displaying these characters, please set your e-reader device to publisher defaults (if available) or to an alternate font.

The Gateless Barrier (Ch., Wumenguan; Jp., Mumonkan) is a thirteenth-century work that offers forty-eight entryways to wake up to your life. These entryways are presented as a barrier or checkpoint at a gate. They are short cases of life scenarios that show where you are stuck. The truth is, there is no gate or barrier. Where you feel stuck is precisely where you realize awakening or freedom. In other words, all of lifes ups and downs are opportunities to realize your true nature. This is why these checkpoints or entryways are gateless. The main message of this work is clear: You are already free. But knowing this is not enough. You have to live it. Take everything you meet as an opportunity that can free you from bondage. This book shows you how.

If you allow the entryways or cases in this book to stand as mere stories from the distant past, unrelated to your life, then even if you read this book a hundred times you will still meet barriers everywhere you go. But if you take these cases as insights to aspects of your life, then they will come alive and you will wake up from the slumber of delusion, vexations, and suffering. You will open up to wisdom.

Chan master Wumen Huikai (11831260), whose name actually means open to wisdom [and realize] the gateless is the compiler of the