Wu-men-kuan Chin. (Jap., Mumonkan), lit. “the Gateless Gate”; one of the two most important kōan collections in Ch’an (Zen) literature; the other is the Pi-yen-lu. The Wu-men-kuan was compiled by the Chinese Ch’an (Zen) master Wu-men Hui-k’ai (Jap., Mumon Ekai). It is composed of forty-eight kōans, which Wu-men collected and arranged. He provided each kōan with a short insightful commentary and with a “praise” (ju) and published the collection in 1229. In 1254 the Wu-men-kuan was brought to Japan by the Japanese master Kakushin, a student and dharma successor (hassu) of Wu-men. In 1405 Shun’ō Reizan (1334-1408), a fourth-generation dharma heir of Kakushin, published at Kōon-j i monastery the Japanese edition of this work that is considered authoritative down to the present day. Shibayama Zenkei, Zen Comments on the Mumonkan, trans. Sumiko Kudo (New York 1974 ), is noteworthy for the teishō added to the examples of the ancient masters by the important modern Zen master Shibayama Zenkei. Another English translation is Two Zen Classics, trans. Katsuki Sekida (New York, 1977).
The Wu-men-kuan begins with the renowned kōan mu, with which Master Wu-men himself came to profound enlightenment. It is especially suitable as a hosshin kōan, i.e., as a kōan that can help a practitioner to a first enlightenment experience (kenshō, satori). It is still given today to many beginners on the Zen path as their first kōan. Since the Wu-men-kuan’s most famous kōan is used with beginners and since from a literary point of view it is much plainer than the Pi-yen-lu, it is often considered less profound than the latter. This overlooks that a kōan like mu can be understood anew on ever deeper levels of enlightenment and that the Wu-men-kuan also contains examples (for instance, example 38) of nantō kōan, those that are especially difficult to resolve.
Kōans originated as an immediate expression of the C h’an (Zen) realization of the ancient masters realization that is not conceptually graspable (fukasetsu), not “understandable.” Its nature is paradoxical, i.e., beyond concept. Thus Ch’an and Zen texts are among the most difficult to translate in world literature. Even for someone who has achieved perfect mastery of Chinese or Japanese, it is just about impossible for one who does not have a profound realization of Zen to come up with an appropiate translation (i.e, one usable for Zen training) of a kōan. Thus most European translations of the Wu-men-kuan and other Ch’an and Zen texts suffer from the fact that though the translaters may be philologically competent, they do not possess the “Zen eye.”
The reader o f Ch’an and Zen texts who finds kōans strange or alienating, must keep in mind that kōans are by definition ununderstandable, inaccessible to the reasoning mind-precisely because they are challenges to transcend logical-conceptual mind. Even in cases where illuminating interpretations of kōans present themselves, from the standpoint of Zen they are false if they are thought out and will be quickly exposed as such by any Zen master. Texts like the Wu-men-kuan are aids in Zen training and should not be regarded either as literature or as a historical record. For a person practicing zazen with a kōan, it is not the point to be informed about what a Chinese Ch’an master experienced or said hundreds of years ago, but rather to realize himself here and now the living truth toward which the kōan points. Many of the kōans in the Wu-men-kuan and other collections might appear superficially as amusing anecdotes not rarely Ch’an or Zen masters have a profound sense of humor-but, the power of these kōans to enlighten, which alone is important for Zen, becomes evident only within the context of Zen training under the guidance of a rōshi.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion: Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Zen. Shambhala Publications, Inc.
Books on Wu-men-kuan
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