Embarking on formal koan study of the 48 cases in No-Gate Gateway, I pondered how I might document my experience of direct non-verbal insight (“breaking through the barrier”), both for my teacher and for myself. I discovered that my spontaneous way of responding to a koan is with a spoken poem (or brushed calligraphy/painting) because poetic and pictorial language allows one to “point to” or “hint at” from behind rather than to conduct a frontal assault. Indeed, the original koans in No-Gate Gateway were compiled by the prominent Southern Song dynasty Ch’an master Wumen Huikai (無門慧開, 1183–1260). It was written in a literary form of poetry or storytelling typified by poetic distillation, rather than a philosophical treatise. A foundational Zen teaching is that conveying the experience of awakening to the Buddha-nature within each of us is “a separate transmission outside of words and letters.” In point of fact, there is no answer at all, nothing to teach or learn, only radiant empty-mind depths that are the very nature of consciousness itself, the original-nature that all sentient beings share.
As David Hinton writes, “Success in sangha-case encounter (koan study) always involves responding with wu-wei (“not acting”) spontaneity, action that lies outside any logical analysis. The correct response is whatever thought or action emerges spontaneously from that silent emptiness cultivated and inhabited as home-ground in meditation practice, the generative emptiness of wu-mind (no-mind or Absence-mind), where the logical construction of thoughts has not yet begun…This is radical self-reliance, trusting oneself rather than teachers and their words. And more radical still: it is wu-wei at the most profound level–‘Absence-action,’ improvisational action in which one moves as the generative source, as the Cosmos unfurling its possibilities. And in this, it is cultivation of the sage dwelling that defines Ch’an enlightenment, dwelling heart and mind as an organic part of Tao’s great transformation of things…When a sangha-case plays out in words, it grows directly out of the understanding of wu-wei gained in meditation. Rather than the calculating machinery of an isolated self, an insightful response emerges with selfless spontaneity from the empty origin-tissue: thought as Tao unfurling its transformations…As physical action, an insightful response is selfless action as integral to the unfurling Cosmos, action moving with the dynamic energy of the Cosmos. Either way, words or actions, sangha-cases are not about explaining enlightened understanding; they are about enacting it…This assertion of thoroughgoing self-reliance represents one of Ch’an’s most fundamental principles: that we are in our inherent nature always already enlightened, and that only by overthrowing teachers and their teachings (answers) can we realize this enlightenment (depths).”
What follows are my No-Gate Gateway poems and comments with the dates when they were composed. Although I generally follow a chronologic order, occasionally my study of Zen calligraphy leads me to encounter a brushed inscription of a koan that lands me ahead, as reflected in dates of composition that are not contiguous.When poems are first composed in Chinese (infrequently), I also include the translation in hanyu pinyin and kanji.
1David Hinton, The Blue-Cliff Record, Shambala Publications, Inc (2024), pg. ix-xx
Case 1: Master Visitation-Land’s Mu (無)
Kensho (9/10/26) triggered by a translation that mimics the original koan’s grammatical structure1:
僧問趙州：「狗子還有佛性也無 ?」
州云：「無 !」
A monk asked Master Visitation-Land (Zhaozhou or Joshu): “A dog too has Buddha-nature, no [無]?
“No/Absence [無],” Visitation-Land replied.
In the American tradition of Zen, this 無 (mu in Japanese, wu in the original Chinese) is taken as a blank denial of meaning-making, which is registered by letting the word remain untranslated, an inexplicable nothing:
A monk asked Master Visitation-Land: “Does a dog have Buddha-nature?”
“Mu,” Visitation-Land replied.
The difference is that the play on words “No/Absence [無]” reveals itself in its full richness, for here it means not just utter negation, but also “Absence.” Not just the denial of meaning-making, but also the generative cosmological/ontological ground in which Absence (“form-less”) and Presence (“form-full”) are not distinct realities, but rather different ways of seeing the ever-generative tissue of reality.
In the question, 無 would appear to be nothing more than a grammatical function word coming at the end of a sentence, which makes Visitation-Land’s 無 breathtaking, for it suddenly deepens that insignificant 無 all the way to the source of everything: Absence, that formless and pregnant tissue from which all things arise.
What’s more, there is another play on words “has/Presence [有].” With this, another version of the monk’s question echoes behind literally: “A dog too Presences Buddha-nature, or Absence?” Once the question is invested with its cosmological depth, Visitation-Land’s 無 ends thought, leaving empty-mind in its wake.2
1David Hinton, The Original Wu-Men Kuan (2018), Shambhala Publications (Boulder, CO)
2David Hinton, China Root (2020), Shambhala Publications (Boulder, CO), pg. 53-55