無門關
The Gateless Gate
大道無門
千差有路
透得此關
乾坤獨歩
The great path has no gates,
Thousands of roads enter it.
When one passes through this gateless gate
He walks freely between heaven and earth.
-- Mumon
Courtesy of iBiblio, I have now noded up 33 of the 49 Zen koans in Mumon's classic collection
The Gateless Gate. While the identity of the original translator is unknown, this English translation (from Japanese) is known to date from the
late 1800's and is in the public domain. The koans themselves, of course, date back hundreds of years. The transcription was done by Ben Walter and Adam Fuller.
The koans are not numbered, since the
numbering between versions varies widely.
Since I did not want to detract from the flow, hardlinks have intentionally been used very sparingly,
primarily for more esoteric Buddhist terminology
(and some more or less famous characters as well).
Other than fixing a few typos, the text itself has not been altered. Without further ado:
I am currently testing out how to best incorporate
the original (ancient)
Chinese into the koans;
if you have any ideas or comments, please /msg me.