Hwadu Practice: The Great Question and the Power of “Don’t Know” with Andrzej Stec, JDPSN

Well, you mentioned that actually Zen Master Sung San was not per se a Huadu promoter.

Huadu is in Chinese, it means the head of the work.

But originally in Zen there was no Huadu, there was no Kongan.

Many people also confuse Kongan with Huadu because both have question in it.

So you cannot have a kongan without question, but the kongan can become a huadu.

And that started during the Song Dynasty.

Taoist Sun Kao, if I'm pronouncing his name correctly, and the Sunyi, who was a student of Yuan Wu, the author of Luke Cliff Record, one of the first book about which has like 100 cases of many you know exchange mostly from the old tanks dynasties and master with students and you know starting from the time you know yuanwu the teacher of the He was not also promoting this kind of practice.

He will have this collection of the congas even written in the Blue Cliff Record, but he will just present it to the students just ad hoc in the moment.

And the student will either have some kind of insight or get this don't know question, but was not encouraged to carry on this what do with him, I would say permanently.

But then his student got a different idea and he decided that why not create with one kongan a deep sensation of the doubt.

In Buddhist, doubt is always considered as an obstacle for enlightenment, but the Hesonim thought okay maybe we can use the doubt to cut off all the thinking and bring insight or attaining true self enlightenment so what do become like a technique to get enlightenment and the way you work with wadu you have to keep it all the time so let's say there's like well in zen buddhism there's 1700 konga so you will go to the teacher and you will get one of those kongans and maybe you will have to kind of simplify it and create a meditation device the thing is a mental kind of technique which we will use on the cushion while you meditate, also when you walk, when you work, 24-7, even when you sleep.

And if the question is big, then there is a big enlightenment.

If the question is weak, There is a weak enlightenment.

There is no question, there is no enlightenment.

Right.

So in the Korean Choge order, I think in Chinese Buddhism too, Zen, Chan, and also in Korean, this kind of method is still a traditional way.

There's a kanwa song, so insight into the words.

So that's a technique.

So in our school, we talk about big questions.

But the Master Sungsang was talking about complete question.

So complete question is, what am I? And some people will come to him and say, oh, who is listening? Candidates also have a big question.

Can I use this question for meditation? Or...

Who is feeling the pain, right? Like if you feel a pain during meditation, you know, who is it or what is that? But he said, that's not complete.

You know, pain is a pain.

Sound is a sound.