Practising the impossible

"Where? Where can I enter the way?
How? How can I study?"

Kyosei asked a question in turn: “ What is the noise outside?”

“That’s the voice of the raindrops, that’s the rain” the student said.

“Enter from there” Kyosei replied.


A gate. But that gate, unlike any other, doesn’t lead anywhere. Gateless gate.Kyosei doesn’t actually point at the objective thing called “rain” ( how could rain be perceived as something happening" over there", anyway?) I believe that this good old fox is pointing at the activity of the self. Listen to the word "enter".The activity cannot meet its end, you cannot enter through the gate of rain. The curtain made of rain drops won't let you through. You are too big anyway. Therefore, you simply, utterly endlessly “enter”. Pure direction without destination or goal.

In other words, letting this "entering" doing itself in sitting, we allow our sitting-zen to be nothing but nothing but nothing. A living gate opening on itself, again and again. A dynamic space free of the rigidity and fixation of hope and fear, free of the worry of achieving, grasping, fixing, loosing. A space free of any view. I know: it sounds a bit philosophical, heavy almost pompous. When kyosei whispers "enter from there" he manifests the direction of great simplicity, he urges you-me-everybody to practice the impossible and be met by the ineffable.

What is it? Keep entering and if you can help it, never get anywhere.