Extracts from Tao: The Gateless Gate
as translated and interpreted by Stanley Rosenthal
All paths lead
to the gateless gate.
And here,
the rivers of enlightenment
become the boundless ocean
of eternity.
And if you seek to find
my contribution to mankind,
then you must journey
beyond the gateless gate,
and you will find it there,
a single drop of water.
...Tekisui
There is a story we are told,
of a brash young student
who sought tuition in the mystic ways.
The student did regail
the master
with tales of what he had accomplished
and had already gained.
He did ask the master
that he might learn from him
that little which, he said,
he might not already know.
The master did not make reply,
but bade the student
take some tea with him.
The student held the cup,
the master poured,
and kept on pouring
even when the cup was full.
The student, soaked with tea,
did cry for him to stop.
The master did as he was asked,
but said,
'When the cup is full,
behold,
no room for more.
So if this mystic wisdom
you would sup,
ensure that you come hither
with an empty cup.'
We should remember
what the early master said,
"I thought
that I
had far
to go,
until I turned
and saw,
that I
had passed
my destination,
many years
before."
'The blossoms
that above
the leaves do grow,
may come
to summer fullness
first.
But if we care
to look
beneath the leaf,
a flower
of even greater beauty
may be found.
And so,
when looking
for a master
or a guide,
look to the spirit
of the man,
and not the clothes
his spirit wears.'
'Then will the moonbeam
of delight,
place tranquility
within the total man
and fill him
with its light.'
The Kinds of Gates
Many are the kinds of gate,
but that which is to man
of greatest magnitude,
is that which he creates,
or does permit to be created in his name.
But he who passes through each gate
will surely find, that it was a barrier
only there, within his mind.
If we allow it to be so,
each gate that we encounter
may be a gateless gate,
for as we pass beneath the gate
it does become a gateway
and so becomes a gateless gate
.
All gates are barriers when closed
but, when opened, do become
the means of going out,
of passing through, and coming in.
Such gateways in the mind
are opened
simply by refusal to accept
their ability to bar the way.
For barriers which are so set
may thus be left behind,
by passing through them
with an honest heart
and open mind.
But just how many gates there are,
no man can say, for each man
does create his own
by passing through the one
which was before until there are no more.
But should there be a gate
which the man cannot pass through,
that gate then shall be his last,
until, by mystic art, he finds the path
which takes him through that gateless gate,
for that gate then
becomes the gateless gate
which takes him to the next.
'... for all rightful paths
lead to the gateless gate,
and passing through
the gateless gate,
we walk between
heaven and earth.'
The Mind Gateways
There are at least four gates
through which each man must pass,
if he is to find enlightenment.
There may be many more than these,
but these apply
to each and every man
who sets out on the path.
And these four, therefore ar the barriers,
or if we do transcend them,
the means of entry, to enlightenment.
Each of these gateways does allow
us entry to a new estate,
a mode of being different from the last.
The first gate is the gateway into time,
which we pass through when life does come to us
,
and passing through this gateway into time,
we do exist at least,
as other objects do, upon the earth.
But birth provides us with the means
of passing through the second gate.
For man, in life, is animate,
and so responds to his enviroment
by passing through the gateway of the senses.
And so we use this gate
to transcend existence at the level
of the object, and so exist
as living creatues on the earth.
Yet man is even more than this,
for he has reason in which he may abide.
secure in consciousness that he exists.
And so we pass beneath that gate
which leads to reason.
For what the sesnses apprehend,
we comprehend with reason.
That gate which is the third,
leads into reason,
that estate where mindfulness
and 'I'ness also dwell.
But in living, it must be
that man must live as something more as well,
'... for, in man
there is a need,
from time to time,
to achieve that something
more than reason,
in name, tranquility.'
The fourth gate takes us out of reason,
and into tranquility.
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