“Between Earth and Sky”

“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.”

This is the first of the many Zen-filled quatrains in “Writings from Zen masters”. Following Buddhist tradition, it is simple yet profound. The quatrain has to do with attaining “enlightenment” the most elevated stage of human self-development.

“The great path has no gates”, line has to do with the path to enlightenment. The great path is the path to the enlightenment, the most meaningful path any man can make. The path having no gates is consistent with the Zen view that the Zen master is not one thing or the other, but just is. It’s hard to conceive but in the enlightened state there are no absolutes, just existence. Just as the gateless gate

“Thousands of roads enter it.” is a testament to there being no one right way to attain the ultimate stage of human development. The robes, the monastery, and the rural Asian upbringings are all un-necessary; the only thing that matters is that the journey is made to get you to the gateless gate. The path you take may be direct, may be a lifetime, but all else is irrelevant once the path is complete.

“When one passes through the gateless gate
He walks freely between heaven and earth”
Passing through the gateless gate means reaching enlightenment, allowing you to walk freely between the human realms. This gained ability to walk freely between heaven and earth is an abstract and puzzling concept. As with much of Zen’s teachings, only the enlightened can fully understand the meaning of such elevated thoughts. What we can try to imagine is that it means that the enlightened individual does not belong to any one realm, as do others. Enlightenment is the state where the human condition; the ego, the self, are all surpassed and we reach a higher state. Being able to walk freely between the realm of the human and the realm of the supernatural means that you have not yet passed on to the supernatural world, but are able live in the in-between of the universal collective Zen dimension.

It is apparent that this simple quatrain written more than 750 years ago is packed with layer upon layer of wisdom. Hopefully as we progress on our path we can begin to understand what the ancient wise men of the East have worked so hard to preserve for the rest of humanity.