Story:

The Gates of Heaven, and the Gates of Hell

Once, a revered Zen Buddhist teacher was holding forth, in his quiet way, to his disciples.

 Suddenly, in walked a soldier with a long sword in his belt. He went straight up to the Zen teacher and said, in an insulting tone, “Are you the one who is teaching all this nonsense about the gates of heaven and the gates of hell?”

The teacher turned, scrutinized the intruder, and challenged him rudely, “So, who’s asking”?

“I am a famous samurai!”

“Ha, ha, ha!," scoffed the teacher. "You’re a samurai warrior? You’re too ugly!”

“You insult me!” Red-faced, the soldier put his hand on the handle of his sword. “Do you realize that with a single stroke of this sword I could sever your head from your body?”

“With that sword? It's too dull. You couldn’t use that to cut a radish!”

“How dare you!” At that, the soldier drew his sword and lifted it over his head to strike the Zen teacher.

The teacher said, calmly now, “That is the gate of hell.”

In that moment, the soldier saw himself. He saw how easily he could be incited to an act of violence. He saw how his whole life had been a series of rebounds from one act of violence to the next. 

Then he saw the Zen teacher. “Who is he—who cares enough to hold up a mirror to a rude passing soldier?”

And then the soldier thought, “To go from my life of bullying, to his life of seeing and caring: what a long road that must be. What a long, long road that must be!”

Deep in thought, the soldier returned his sword to his belt.

The Zen teacher said, “And that is the gate of heaven.”

——————

Adapted from an oral version I heard told at a storytelling event in the early 1980s, by storyteller Reuven Gold. Reuven told me he had adapted it from the version in Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, where the teacher is identified as the great Zen teacher, Hakuin (1685?-1769).