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三門

Pronunciations

Basic Meaning: three gates

Senses:

  • Purity of body, speech, and thought 三業 (Skt. trividha-dvāra). [Charles Muller; source(s): Ui, Nakamura, Soothill, Yokoi, Iwanami]
  • Three gates to liberation; see 三解脫門 (emptiness 空, signlessness 無相, desirelessness 無願). [Charles Muller; source(s): Soothill]
  • The three things leading to enlightenment: wisdom 智慧門, compassion 慈悲門, and skillful means 方便門. [Charles Muller; source(s): JEBD]
  • A gate with three entrances: central, right, and left. [Charles Muller; source(s): JEBD, Yokoi]
  • The three ways to wisdom 三慧: listening 聞慧, thinking 思慧, and practice 修慧. [Charles Muller; source(s): JEBD]
  • The three elements of Buddhism: doctrine 教, discipline 律, and meditation 禪. [Charles Muller; source(s): JEBD]
  • The three gates of a temple. Another name for the mountain gate 山門, which is the main gate of a Buddhist monastery. The mountain gates at many large Buddhist monasteries in China and Japan have three portals, a fact that led to the close association of the two terms, but the mountain gates at many Buddhist temples across East Asia are more modest structures that have just a single portal. The terms 'triple gate' and 'mountain gate' are homonyms in Japanese (they sound exactly the same when spoken and are only distinguishable when written), but they are pronounced somewhat differently in the original Chinese (sanmen 三門 vs. shanmen 山門). Nevertheless, in both China and Japan, even those mountain gates with a single portal have often been called 'triple gates.' That nomenclature could be explained simply by the human tendency to exaggerate, or to call things what they ought to be rather than what they actually are. A Song Chinese text entitled Encyclopedia of Buddhism 釋氏要覽, however, theorizes that the expression 'triple gate' refers not to the number of portals in the main gate of a monastery, but metaphorically to the 'three gates of liberation'  三解脫門 sought by those who enter the monastery: the gate of emptiness 空門, the gate of signlessness 無相門, and the gate of nonconstructedness 無作門. That explanation was repeated by the Japanese Zen monk and scholar Mujaku Dōchū (1653–1744) in his Encyclopedia of Zen Monasticism, which is quoted in Standard Observations of the Sōtō Zen school. The latter text concludes that "we may regard 'mountain gate'  山門 as referring to a monastery as a whole, and 'triple gate' as referring to the gate that is used to go in and out of a monastery." In Japanese Zen today, nevertheless, the main gates of large monasteries and small temples alike get called (in writing) both 'mountain gate' and 'triple gate.' [Griffith Foulk]
  • Three essential components of training found in early seventeenth-century Korea— an innovation in the monastic education system that related Pure Land buddha-recitation 念佛, Seon meditation 禪, and formal doctrinal study 教 as three essential components of training. This program was articulated by Hyujeong 休靜 in his Simbeop yocho 心法要抄. [Charles Jones]
  • (Skt. tri-mukha, traya-mukha) [Charles Muller; source(s): Hirakawa]
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    [Dictionary References]

    Bukkyō jiten (Ui) 380

    Bulgyo sajeon 401a

    Zengaku daijiten (Komazawa U.) 410d

    Iwanami bukkyō jiten 331

    A Glossary of Zen Terms (Inagaki) 308

    Japanese-English Buddhist Dictionary (Daitō shuppansha) 250a/277

    Zenrin shōkisen (Mujaku Dōchū) 50/14

    Japanese-English Zen Buddhist Dictionary (Yokoi) 573

    Zengo jiten (Iriya and Koga) 11-P260

    Bukkyōgo daijiten (Nakamura) 492a

    Fo Guang Dictionary 576

    Ding Fubao

    Buddhist Chinese-Sanskrit Dictionary (Hirakawa) 0023

    Bukkyō daijiten (Mochizuki) (v.1-6)1691a,1498c

    Bukkyō daijiten (Oda) 667-1*998-2

    (Soothill's) Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms 79

    Copyright provisions

    The rights to textual segments (nodes) of the DDB are owned by the author indicated in the brackets next to each segment. For rights regarding the compilation as a whole, please contact Charles Muller. Please do not reproduce without permission. And please do not copy into Wikipedia without proper citation!

    Entry created: 2001-09-08

    Updated: 2020-01-04