..續本文上一頁edge, experience, and reasoning, since the answer is not accessible by these methods. The student must find the answer by can (pronounced: tsan) gongan, or “investigating the gongan.” This requires sweeping from consciousness everything but the gongan, eventually generating the “doubt sensation,” which is a strong sensation of wonder and an intense desire to know the meaning of the gongan.

　　Closely related, but not identical to the gongan is the huatou. A huatou─literally, “head of a spoken word”─is a question that a practitioner asks himself or herself. “What is Wu

　　” and “Who am I

　　” are commonly used huatous. In the huatou practice, one devotes one”s full attention to repeating the question incessantly. The gongan and the huatou methods are similar in that the practitioner tries to arouse the great doubt sensation in order to eventually shatter it and awaken to enlightenment.

　　Chan Master Dahui Zhong gao (1089-1163), one of the greatest advocates of huatou practice, maintained that sitting meditation is necessary to settle the wandering mind before a student can effectively use a gongan or huatou. A scattered mind lacks the focus or energy necessary to generate the great doubt, so in training students, Master Sheng Yen first give them a method to unify the shattered mind. Once the student”s mind is stable and concentrated, the application of gongan or huatou may cause the great doubt to rise. This doubt is not the ordinary doubt of questioning the truth of an assertion.

　　It is the fundamental uncertainty, the existential dilemma, which underlies all of our experiences: the question of who we are and the meaning of life and death. Because the question inherent in the gongan or huatou can not resolved by logic, the practitioner must continually return to the question, nurturing the “doubt mass” until it is like a “hot ball of iron stuck in his throat”. If the practitioner can persist and keep the energy from dissipating, the doubt mass will eventually disappear in an explosion that can wipe away all doubt from the mind, leaving nothing but the mind”s original nature, or enlightenment.

　　It is also possible, and perhaps more likely, that the explosion will lack sufficient energy to completely cleanse the mind of attachment. Even as great a master as Dashui did not penetrate sufficiently in his first explosive experience. His teacher Yuanwu (1063-1135) told him, “You have died, but you have come back to life.” His enlightenment was confirmed on his second experience.

　　Therefore, it is very important to have a reliable Shifu (the Master), or teacher, guiding one through all stages of practice. At the outset, attempting to generate the great doubt before the mind is sufficiently stable would, at best, be useless and, at worst, give rise to a lot of anxiety. And finally, any experience one has as a result of the practice must be confirmed by an adept master. Only a genuine master will know the difference between a true and a false enlightenment.

　　The practice of gongan or huatou is an aggressive, explosive approach toward enlightenment; the practice of Silent Illumination is a more peaceful way. Both, however, require the same foundation: a stable and unified mind. And both have the same purpose: the realization of the nature of mind, which is the nature of emptiness, Buddhist-nature, wisdom and enlightenment.

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