When shown the door,
take the door,
and put no trust in kings. 

Ask and it will be given to you;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.

We
Are not
In pursuit of formalities
Or fake religious
Laws,

For through the stairway of existence
We have come to God’s
Door.

We are
People who need to love, because
Love is the soul’s life,

Love is simply creation’s greatest joy.

Through
The stairway of existence,
O, through the stairway of existence, Hafiz

Have
You now come,
Have we all now come to
The Beloved’s
Door.

My dears, wish you God's blessings in the new year. It is always with us but sometimes something prevents to feel it.
Several years ago I posted this video in youtube, hoping that the world got a temporary respite but it happens only when it should. Sometimes, the hard times are the best for the understanding. As my old friend said:"Happiness can be found even in the darkest times if one only remembers to turn on the light."
Close the door of hate and open the door of love.
Love you.

The most famous koan written by Zen master Wumen Huikai (1183 - 1260).

By Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī 

How lover and beloved touch is familiar and courteous,
but there is a strange impulse in that
to create a form that will dissolve all other shapes.
Remember,
the entrance door to the sanctuary
is inside you.
We watch a sunlight dust dance,
and we try to be that lively,
but nobody knows what music
those particles hear.
Each of us has a secret companion musician
to dance to.
Unique rhythmic play,
a motion in the street
we alone know
and hear.
Shams is a king of kings like Mahmud,
but there's not another
pearl-crushing dervish Ayaz like me.

Sometimes, the door used as a symbol, is the usual physical door also. In any way, it does not take away the symbolical sense. On the contrary - this sense can extend. All depends on your understanding in this concrete time. The such happens with one of the four Saiva Samaya Acharyas of the 7th century - Thirunavukarasar (Appar). One interesting legend is connected with him.

Once upon a time, the Vedas themselves used to worship the Lord Shiva in the Vedaranyeswarar Temple. When people neglected the study of the Vedas, this was discontinued. From that time, the door by which the Vedas used to enter, remained closed. There was another door by which people would go in and worship. Appar and other saint, Thirugnanasambandhar (Sambanthar), heard of this when they came there. He requested Appar to sing a song. The doors opened by themselves, by the Will of God. They went in and worshipped the Lord. When they returned to that entrance, Sambanthar sang and the door closed again.

So, you can understand this opening and closing the temple doors symbolically or actually, but the main thing that  this miracle can happen to you.

Let's return again to my Door's theme (others posts - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). This parable is from "The Conference of the Birds", written by one of my favourite authors -  Farid al-Din 'Attar. As a part of "The Valley of Bewilderment", it is a little sad in its uncertainty. Because there was a Door to which somebody found no Key. So, this story is called - "The Lost Key".

A Sufi once heard a man saying, “I have lost a key. Has any one found it anywhere? The door of my house is shut and I am without shelter in the street. If the door remains closed, what shall I do? I shall be for ever miserable. What shall I do?”
“Who wishes you to be miserable?” asked the Sufi. “Since you know where the door is, go and stay near it, even though it be closed. If you sit near it for a long time, there is no doubt that some one will open it for you. Your condition is not so bad as mine. My soul is consumed in stupefaction. Of the enigma that bewilders me there is no solution. There is neither a door nor a key for me.”
Would to God the Sufi could set out in all haste and find the door either open or closed! None can know, none can even imagine, the real state of things. To the man who asks, “What shall I do?”, reply “Do not do what you have done. Do not behave as you have behaved up to this moment.”

From Li Daochun's (13th century) "Zhonghe ji" (The Harmony of the Center), ch. 2.

In the methods of the Way there are 3,600 gates: everyone clings to one of them as one's own root.
You should know that the tiny Opening of the Mysterious Barrier is not among those 3,600 gates.

The main point is that this Opening is the utterly mysterious and utterly wondrous Barrier. Here life and death part from one another, and here the saintly and the ordinary separate from one another. This is the secret transmitted from one Patriarch to the next one since ancient times until the present day; it is not something that can be known by means of random conjectures.

Among the students of the later generations who have not encountered a true master, some have thought that this Opening is the mouth and the nose; some that it is the point between the eyebrows; some that it is the fontanel; some that it is the cavity of the Hundred Convergences; some that it is the throat; some that it is the Spinal Handle; some that it is the Caudal Funnel; some that it is the opening of the heart; some that it is the Yellow Court; and some that it is the Cinnabar Field, the Origin of the Barrier, or the Ocean of Breath.
None of the above is the One Opening of the Mysterious Barrier. The Mysterious Barrier has no form and no image: how could it have a position? It is not form and it is not emptiness: how could it have a place? If it could be seen through its place or its position, it would be something provided with form and image, and we could not call it Mysterious Barrier.

This Opening does not not stick to the illusory body, and yet it is not separated from the illusory body. It does not stick to the illusory body because it is not a common thing provided with a form; it is not separated from the illusory body because it cannot be sought outside the body. In other words, it is neither something outside the body nor something inside the body. Therefore it can only exist in what is neither inside nor outside. There is a special celestial mechanism in this.

This Opening has a shape similar to Penglai:
outside it is small, inside it is large,
and its depth cannot be fathomed.
It is not round and it is not square;
within it, "the black and the white tally with each other,"
and darkness and light pervade one another.
Its gate is fifty feet high and four feet wide,
and has two panels:
once they open, once they close.
On its left coils a green dragon,
on its right is couched a white tiger,
above flies a vermilion sparrow,
below rests a black turtle.
Vague and indistinct! Dim and obscure!
A True Man lives inside it:
his name is Spirit of the Valley,
his appellation is Living a Long Life.
At daytime, he eats a broth of millet;
at night, he drinks the liquor of the boundless.
Sometimes he sings, clear and peaceful;
sometimes he is motionless, and keeps his mouth closed.
When he exhales, the gate of the Opening is wide open,
when he inhales, the gate of the Opening is firmly shut.

My door's theme is continued by "The Gates" by Zohar (Moses de Leon). As very hidden symbolism, the "gates" here referred to are the Sephiroth of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Each gate or Sephiroth can be understood as an aspect of the Divine that ultimately leads the mystic to the wholeness of the Divine.

He [Abraham] was sitting in the opening of the tent....
Sarah heard from the opening of the tent. (Genesis 18:1, 10)

Rabbi Judah opened
"'Her husband is known in the gates
when he sits among the elders of the land'
(Proverbs 31:23).

Come and see:
The Blessed Holy One has ascended in glory.
He is hidden, concealed, far beyond.
There is no one in the world, nor has there ever been,
who can understand His wisdom or withstand Him.
He is hidden, concealed, transcendent, beyond, beyond.

The beings up above and the creatures down below--
none of them can comprehend.
All they can say is:
"Blessed be the Presence of YHVH in His place'
(Ezekiel 3:12)
The ones below proclaim that He is above:
'His Presence is above the heavens'
(Psalms 113:4)
the ones above proclaim that He is below:
'Your Presence is over all the earth'
(Psalms 57:12).
Finally all of them, above and below, declare:
'Blessed be the Presence of YHVH wherever He is!'
For He is unknowable.
No one has ever been able to identify Him.
How, then, can you say:
'Her husband is known in the gates'?
Her husband is the Blessed Holy One!

Indeed, He is known in the gates.
He is known and grasped
to the degree that one opens the gates of imagination!
The capacity to connect with the spirit of wisdom,
to imagine in one's heart-mind--
this is how God becomes known.

Therefore 'Her husband is known in the gates,'
through the gates of imagination.
But that He be known as He really is?
No one has ever been able to attain such knowledge of Him."

Rabbi Shim'on said
"'Her husband is known in the gates.'
Who are these gates?
The ones addressed in the Psalm:
'O gates, lift up your heads!
Be lifted up, openings of eternity,
so the King of Glory may come!'
(Psalms 24:7)
Through these gates, these spheres on high,
the Blessed Holy One becomes known.
Were it not so, no one could commune with Him.

Come and see:
Neshamah of a human being is unknowable
except through limbs of the body,
subordinates of neshamah who carry out what she designs.
Thus she is known and unknown.

The Blessed Holy One too is known and unknown.
For He is Neshamah of neshamah, Pneuma of pneuma,
completely hidden away;
but through these gates, openings for neshumah,
the Blessed Holy One becomes known.

Come and see:
There is opening within opening,
level beyond level.
Through these the Glory of God becomes known.

'The opening of the tent' is the opening of Righteousness,
as the Psalmist says:
'Open for me the gates of righteousness...'
(Psalms 118:19).
This is the first opening to enter.
Through this opening, all other high openings come into view.
One who attains the clarity of this opening
discovers all the other openings,
for all of them abide here.

Torii is a gate that marks the entrance to a Shinto shrine precinct. But they are not really "gates" at all, as they rarely stand within a fence or wall and have no doors to open or close. The purpose of the gate is to divide our world and the spirit world. They represent invisible barriers between an inner world that is clean, pure, and bright and an outer world that is spiritually polluted and morally uncertain. Thus, they are powerful symbols of the way that Japanese organize the world, associating the inner with the sacred and the outer with the profane. Shinto shrines supposedly don’t actually exist in this world. They do, but they don’t. The shrine grounds exist on a place that overlaps with the spirit world. Torii gates mark the symbolic entrance to this area. To pass through a torii gate is to enter a sacred realm.
The archways similar to the torii are in many parts of Asia -- in China, Korea, Thailand, and India. For example, the torana at Sanchi.
 The torii of Japan, however, are more than just the symbols of milestones on the road. They are part of the temple or shrine and everything that these signify. They are gateways of awakening  and the first stage in purification. At many shrines, the site is marked by a progression of torii gates, sometimes placed so closely together that they create a tunnel-like effect. Passing through these gates, there is a magical sense of deepening spirituality: a cleansing of outer pollution and a growing awareness of inner purity. As Tennyson wrote: