The Gateless Barrier: The Wu-Men Kuan (Mumonkan) Book

The Gateless Barrier is generally acknowledged to be the fundamental koan collection in the literature of Zen. Gathered together by Wu-men (Mumon), a thirteenth-century master of the Lin-chi (Rinzai) school, it is composed of forty-eight koans, or cases, each accompanied by a brief comment and poem by Wu-men.

Robert Aitken, one of the premier American Zen masters, has translated Wu-men's text, supplementing the original with his own commentary — the first such commentary by a Western master — making the profound truths of Zen Buddhism accessible to serious contemporary students and relevant to current social concerns.

Library Journal

The Mumonkan is a classic Zen text consisting of 48 koans collected by Wu-men, a Chinese master who lived in the 13th century. This fresh translation and commentary by Aitken, a prominent American Zen master, is striking in its evidence of careful scholarship and attention to the problems of translation. In contrast to Zenkei Shibayama's Zen Comments on the Mumonkan ( LJ 4/15/74), Aitken's commentaries more carefully maintain a feeling of Zen ``non'' sense in addressing the content of the cases, yet his historical explications nicely place the text in perspective for the uninitiated reader. This translation belongs alongside other editions in collections with a particular interest in Zen. For those with a more marginal interest, this would only be appropriate as an enhancement to more basic works on the subject.-- Mark Woodhouse, Gan nett-Tripp Lib., Elmira Coll., N.Y.