Mumonkan / Wumenguan · CASE 5
Kyōgen Up a Tree
The Gateless Gate
Case
Master Kyōgen said: “It is like someone up a tree, his teeth clamped on a branch. His hands grasp no branch; his feet touch no part of the tree. Someone below the tree asks him the meaning of the coming from the west.1 If he does not answer, he fails to meet the man's question. If he answers, he loses his body and forfeits his life. At just such a moment, how do you answer?”
Verse
Kyōgen really makes things up; his venom has no end. He shuts the patch-robed monks' mouths— ghost-eyes pop out all over their bodies.3
Footnotes 3
- 西來意, “the meaning/intention of the coming from the west,” is a stock Zen question about Bodhidharma's journey to China and, by extension, the point of the ancestral teaching. The translation keeps the historical shorthand rather than answering it inside the case. ↩
- 懸河之辨 compares eloquence to a river pouring down from above. 大藏教 means the Buddhist canon as a whole. Maitreya is the Buddha expected in the future; “ask Maitreya” therefore means waiting an immeasurably long time, with a comic anticlimax. ↩
- 衲僧, literally a monk in a patched robe, is ordinary Zen language for a practitioner. The final bodily image is intentionally grotesque and is not elevated into mystical vision. ↩
About this version and its sources
- Full source citation
- CBETA T2005: T48n2005_p0293c01–p0293c11. Pilot controls: Waseda Bunko 31 E1103, PDF pp. 14–15; Keio 110X@509@1, PDF p. 8.
- Method
- Direct critical-edition translation from the cited received base text. Source claims, hagiography, uncertainty, and unresolved readings remain identified in the notes and project record.
- Editorial uncertainty
- Independent philological and reader review remain pending.
- Rights
- Project translation © Tulsa Zen Center Critical Edition contributors. Source text is cited by edition; redistribution policy requires final organizational approval.
- Revision identifier
- a49ed54cae2e
Mumon's commentary
Mumon said: Even if your eloquence pours like a river, it is no use at all. Even if you can expound the entire Buddhist canon, it is no use. If you can land an answer here, you bring the road that was dead before back to life and kill the road that was alive before. If you cannot, wait for the future and ask Maitreya.2