Something there is that does not love a wall.
– Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”
When we enter the dojo, we step over a raised threshold. We often tell people that this is to keep the demons out. But our demons of course are not so easily tripped up. And in any case, they rarely try to enter so boldly. They usually come in as stowaways in the baggage we bring into the dojo with us.
But this leads me to think about the purpose and meaning of gates and walls.
Gates in Japan are used as boundaries and borders and barriers as well as entryways. They are meant as much to keep people out as to let people in. They are borderlands where black and white becomes gray. Dawn and dusk, these twilight zones, are much more dangerous than the witching hour of midnight or the “demon of noontide” when you know what you’re dealing with.
Perhaps we in America think about gates and barriers in the same way, like Robert Frost’s prickly neighbor who claims, “Good fences make good neighbors.” But as Frost speculates in response: “Something there is that does not love a wall.”
In Zen practice we spend a lot of time staring at the wall. Like Daruma, who spent nine years at Shaolin before his eyelids came off and his arms and legs atrophied. During a short sesshin like this one of just a couple of days, we spend nine hours facing the wall. And by that time, it’s true: Something there is that does not love a wall. And maybe that something is you.
In our ceremonies, we hear the word for the kanji for GATE very often, perhaps without recognizing it or knowing what it means. When we chant HOMON during the Four Great Vows of the Bodhisattva, we are saying Dharma (HO) Gates (MON) are endless; we vow to penetrate them all.
In popular culture, Kurosawa’s film Rashomon (the Rasho Gate) has become a synonym for conflicting multiple first-person accounts and the dubious conclusions that might be drawn from them. We all perceive things differently, according to our vantage point, our fears and desires, and the interpretations that arise from these. They are nothing less than conflicting versions of reality that each of us clings to in our isolation. In Kurosawa’s film we see this acted out by characters who have witnessed a crime, as they tell their stories while trapped by a rainstorm under the Rasho Mon. (It’s worth reading the several short stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa that went into the adaptation of Kurosawa’s film.)
Also, when we chant the Eko, the lineage, during the ceremony, we hear Somon Kodo Daiosho. Kodo Sawaki’s monastic name, SOMON, means Ancestral Gate. He was both a barrier to keep out the lackadaisical demons who allowed zazen to fall into disuse, as well as a reformer who brought back the ancestral practice wherever he went. An ancestral gate that is also a barrier.
The Rinzai tradition of course uses the collection of koans called The Gateless Gate, the MUMONKAN, the forty-eight koans collected by Wumen or Mumon Ekai. It is used as a sort of curriculum, students being assigned a koan which they must “pass” before going on to the next. In Soto Zen, however, zazen itself is our koan, the wall that we face is our gateless gate. And our life is the curriculum that provides the assignments we must study without ever hoping to pass. Indeed, life provides us with abundant koans. We only have to see them. Dharma gates are endless. Nor will we ever “graduate.”
Bodhisattva ordination, like we have today, is a kind of boundary, or gate, that we pass through. A matriculation, we might say, into a kindergarten for beginner’s mind. Certainly not a graduation.
The Dharma names we receive are not diplomas. But they can be lifetime koans.
Dharma names can be descriptive or prescriptive, an encouragement or a warning, but they are always a koan. My bodhisattva name, Reishin, for example, means Profound Mind, which seems simple enough, but of course SHIN means both Heart and Mind, so to get beyond the surface (the wall) of Profound Mind, I had to mature enough to penetrate the surface meaning (the barrier) of Profound MInd to discover (by entering the gate of) Profound Heart/Mind, just like Sharishi (Shariputra), who was clever enough intellectually but needed to be educated by Avalokiteshvara about Compassionate Wisdom.
Similarly my monastic name, Taisen, is the same as Deshimaru’s bodhisattva name, but whereas his name means Great Sage, mine (my teacher Robert said) means Great Abandonment. This could be taken in many ways, and it remains my inexhaustible koan to this day. But just because it cannot be solved doesn’t mean it doesn’t provide me with insights and guidance. The better the koan, the more unsolvable it is, and yet the more it reveals.
So you see, these gates are everywhere and they are endless. These barriers might seem to keep the neighbors (the demons) out, and they may seem to be intended to trip us up. But they are the very mechanism of our enlightenment. These barriers to wisdom are endless, and yet it is our practice to penetrate them without a gate. Each satori dissolves a wall, and if you are lucky, you realize that the wall itself is satori.
I have mentioned more than once my fondness for the koan about the ox that climbs through a window. (It’s number 38 in the Mumonkan.) Its horns and legs, and its whole body can get through, but it can’t get its tail through. A window is also a gate — and can be a barrier even if there appears to be no barrier. It depends perhaps on how many demons (bonno) you are smuggling through.
My point, I suppose, is: you don’t need a gate to get to the other side.
— Richard Collins
The cast and director of Rashomon. (Note the Zen monk, the only one clawing at the wall.)