No Gate
[Explaining a calligraphy with the characters Dae Do Mu Mun.]
Dae Do means "great way"; Mu Mun means "no gate." If you insert an English word, it reads, "The great way has no gate." Great way doesn't mean greater than anything else. Great here has the connotation of complete. To realize the complete way is to be completely in touch with what is, moment by moment; not to be holding back and living in some imaginary world of shackles, chains, fantasies, yearnings, hopes, longings, regrets, and all the other things we get caught up in. The great way has no gate.
The word gate has a dual connotation. A gate, of course, is something that opens and closes. It also has the connotation of a barrier. Sometimes that word is translated as checkpoint, like the barrier that exists between one country and another, the place where you show your passport.
The great way has no barrier, no gate. In one sense that means that wherever we are, at that moment — whatever our activity, if we are entering it completely and not getting caught up in separating subject from object and inside from outside — then, at that moment, there is no barrier, no gate. The gate has already been opened. There is no hindrance, no obstacle, only an enlightened way of being and functioning in the world.
—from Don't-Know Mind: The Spirit of Korean Zen, by Richard Shrobe