Buddha Lessons: The Gateless Gate

Enlightenment is understanding that there is nothing to understand.

Every line of questions leads nowhere. Think you have a great philosophy about life the universe and everything? Keep asking it questions. Keep going with it.

It will fall apart.

All philosophies are houses of cards. They fall apart when you shine a light on them.

That’s why nobody in the entire history of the world has come up with a philosophy that everyone hears and says yes, that’s it! Lots of great philosophies out there with lots of followers. And many of those followers believe it is only a matter of time before everyone gets on board. They are wrong. Not going to happen. Ever.

Nobody can make a philosophy that’s true for everyone. And if a philosophy is not true for everyone it is not true at all. It has holes. Everything has holes. Life is a leaky boat.

The reason is that everything that exists in the dreamworld we call life doesn’t really exist. So the further you go, the more contradictions you find. Everything is contradictions. It will trip you up. Think you figured it out and turn around to find out that you haven’t yet again. Hell even this text is hopelessly riddled with contradictions. How can it not be? It’s born of this world, a world of contradictions.

At least that’s the best explanation I or anyone else ever came up with. Nobody really knows. You can’t really know. It’s just yet another attempt to explain the unexplainable.

There are no external things that can teach you any of this. You can only explore it directly.

Ask yourself questions and keep asking questions. It takes about two years before you realize there is nothing you can figure out. Nobody can help you in this.

This site and others mark my two year journey of discovery even though I didn’t know it. I thought I was teaching people. In fact, I was just teaching myself.

If it takes longer you probably aren’t trying very hard or you got lost in one of the distractions along the way. You’re like Ulysses who got sidetracked in the land of the lotus eaters and became a mystic or guru or energy healer or whatever. But those aren’t enlightenment. They’re professions.

Real enlightenment will not bring you anything. You will not become a famous guru heralded through the ages. Nobody will sing your name. In fact, nobody will really listen to you at all. At best they will just think you’re a weird person or a smart person or nobody. Or worst they will think you are crazy or try to kill you for wrecking their cherished belief systems.

You’ll be alone in it.

You won’t be able to tell anyone about it because nobody will be able to hear you. And it will all be pretty damn funny.

Words will be coming out of your mouth or you will write them on a page and nobody will be able to understand them at all.

It can’t be put into words. It can’t be taught.

What about the Buddha or Jesus? They taught right? What all great spiritual teachers teach is compassion and contentment. That’s what people really want. Buddhism could be called compassionism. It’s not really about enlightenment. What about the Buddha? He was enlightened right? Well let’s explore what I’m saying about asking questions.

First, did the Buddha really say anything? Well no. He didn’t write anything down. Nothing. Zero. Zip. Neither did Jesus. In fact, not even the people who were hanging around in his time wrote down anything he said. It took hundreds and in some case a thousand years before anything they “said” got written down. Now look at this from the common sense perspective. You played telephone as a kid right? You saw how bad people’s words got mucked up in about ten minutes. What about a thousand years when the original people who supposedly said it have died and all of their sons and daughters have died and their sons and daughters and so on? Ask yourself, is there really any chance whatsoever that they got those words right? No.

So we have no idea what any of the great teachers taught. But we do know what the religions that sprang up around them taught. Jesus has the golden rule. Buddhists have compassion. Compassion for ourselves and others. Treating others like you want to be treated. Sounds pretty good to me. It’s not enlightenment. Not really. But it may be a by-product of enlightenment and a good one. And its reasonable. Sounds like a good way to live so go ahead an be that way if you want. Be compassionate.

What about modern teachers like Tolle and Osho? Great men. Wise. But they are not teaching how to become enlightened. You can’t get enlightened listening to them. You have to do the work yourself. They are teaching contentment. No mind. Stop thinking so much about stuff. Don’t worry about the past and the future. Why? Because there is a lot to worry about there. We may not live another moment. We may not make it much further. The past it filled with trauma. The future is unknown. So let it go. And be more like the animal you are, happily living your life, ignoring the train wreck that is coming. A good philosophy, but not enlightenment.

The realizations you discover along the way will be yours to cherish and yours alone. Along the journey you will discover all kinds of “magic” tricks and see the divine bones of the universe as you link with cosmic consciousness and yet none of those are enlightenment. They are just more distractions to discard as quickly as possible.

For some reason you were driven from a young age to figure it all out. You saw a problem. You sensed something wasn’t right, like being in a dream and realizing it’s a dream. And so you pursue it in all kinds of wrong places. And mostly people never figure it all out. Why? Because they don’t really want it. They can’t go all the way with it.

At the end of the rainbow is nothing. Literally. You get nothing. It won’t make you famous or happy or content. Only giving up on this insane pursuit will get you what you want. Contentment.

Secretly, you already know everything there is to know. There is nothing to know.

You already know the truth when you break down in tears at your worst moments: that it is all meaningless. We give it meaning by what we do.

Enlightenment is truth realization and the enlightenment sold to you by various spiritual modalities is not real enlightenment. It’s an unenlightened person’s vision of enlightenment. It’s an advertisement.

Nobody lives in a state of constant bliss. It’s not real. It’s a marketing ploy.

Everyone around you suffers. No exceptions. Didn’t the Buddha “say” life is suffering? It is.

No way around it. Best you can do is try to be compassionate. Love your kids and friends and lovers and pets. Try not to create more suffering in the world.

Generally you will fail because that’s just the nature of the world. Try to “fix” things and they just get worse. Spirituality is trying to let go of as much unnecessary suffering as possible.

Spirituality is not suffering.

You already know this. Somewhere inside. There is no mystery to life. It’s self evident and self obvious. But your brain is talking too much. It comes up with all kinds of imaginings and nonsense. None of it is real.

I am going to wreck enlightenment for you. I am going to show you the last page in the book, spoil the ending for you. Don’t worry, it doesn’t matter. You won’t understand it anyway, until you do. Or you will think I don’t have it or that there is more to it that that. There isn’t.

It’s all a gateless gate.

That phrase comes from some Zen koans written in the 1200’s. It’s a mistranslation, but it sounds good. The actual translation from the Chinese is something like the gateless door or the gateless barrier.

But I like gateless gate. It’s more refined. Sounds better. More poetic. Easier to remember.

The book is a bunch of nonsense sayings. Why? Because it’s all nonsense in the end. Life is nonsense. It shouldn’t exist but it does. It should make sense but it doesn’t. And yet it all makes perfect sense. That’s the thing about duality. Both sides of the dice are true and not true at the same time. Huh? Exactly.

Anyway it’s meaning is simple. Like all truth it is that which can’t be any simpler.

There is no barrier to enlightenment.

There is nothing holding you back.

There is nothing keeping you where you are.

None of it is real.

After you get through the door, you’ll realize there was no door at all.

It was all in your head or it was the circumstances or the people babbling around you.

Nobody is keeping anything from you.

It’s all right there, written in bold print on the cover.

Just open your eyes, stop thinking, stop talking, stop trying.

There is nothing to figure out because it can’t be figured out.

The gate is there but it’s not.

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