Dragon Gate — A Zen Parable

I quote the following from Tricks of the Trade by Howard S Becker, pp. 218-9:

"In the middle of the ocean, there is a special place, which is a Dragon Gate. It has this wonderful property: any fish that swims through it immediately turns into a dragon.

"However, the Dragon Gate does not look any different from any other part of the ocean. So you can never find it by looking for it. The only way to know where it is is to notice that the fish who swim through it become dragons.

"However, when a fish swims through the Dragon Gate, and becomes a dragon, it doesn't look any different. It just looks like the same fish it was before. So you can't tell where the Dragon Gate is by looking closely to find just where the change takes place.

"Furthermore, when fish swim through the Dragon Gate and become dragons, they don't feel any different, so they don't know that they have changed into dragons. They just ARE dragons from then on."

It used to be thus when we were wyverns, and the Wyvern Gate was not the province of a king who never was a wyvern.