Wúménguān (The Gateless Barrier / Mumonkan)

Text

Wumen Huikai's 1228 collection of forty-eight kōans, each followed by his prose comment and a verse. Compact, demotic, and unornamented compared with the Blue Cliff Record, it became the standard kōan textbook of the Japanese Rinzai school and remains the entry point for most Western kōan curricula. Cases 1 ("Zhaozhou's dog"), 7 ("Zhaozhou's bowl"), and 19 ("Ordinary mind is the way") are among the best-known.

tr. Nyogen Senzaki & Paul Reps, Public-domain Senzaki/Reps translation, 1934

license: public_domain

Original language

Attribution

• Attributed To
  Wumen Huikai

Lineage: Linji

By Wumen Huikai

• Every Season Is a Good Seasonproverb
• Preface to the Gateless Barriersermon
• The Gateless Barrierproverb
• Concentrate on Muproverb
• Bare Swordproverb

Sources

• contentMumonkan (Gateless Barrier) — Senzaki & Reps translation, 1934

  Nyogen Senzaki, Paul Reps (trans.)

  Wikisource — The Gateless Gate

  The Mumonkan or Wumenguan, compiled by Wumen Huikai in 1228, contains forty-eight kōans, each accompanied by his commentary and verse, and has become the most widely used kōan textbook in the Rinzai tradition.