A simple wooden gate standing open in a misty forest at dawn, one bare stone path leading through it, deep cosmic blue and warm amber palette, contemplative atmospheric style, painterly minimal composition

Imagen 4

The Gateless Gate

Forty-eight Zen koans collected by Mu-mon Ekai in the early thirteenth century

Translator: Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps (Senzaki 1876–1958; Reps 1895–1990), 1934.

Source: John Murray, Los Angeles (privately printed)

Licence: Public Domain. Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps's English rendering, privately printed in Los Angeles in 1934 and later expanded into the better-known Zen Flesh Zen Bones (1957). The 1934 printing is in the US public domain (copyright not renewed). Lightly modernised by Soul Spirit Self where archaic English verb forms persist (Mumon's commentaries are in plain modern English; verses occasionally slip into Edwardian register).

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Forty-eight koans collected by the Chinese Zen master Wu-men (Mu-mon) Hui-k'ai in 1228, with the master's own brief commentary and capping verse on each. The Mumonkan is one of the two foundational Zen koan collections (alongside the Blue Cliff Record) and the principal training text of the Rinzai school.