On Investigating the Hwadu

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Take up a single phrase — not many. Let it be the phrase that cannot be answered by thinking, the phrase that cuts off every road of reasoning. Press it day and night. Press it while walking and sitting. Press it when you are delighted and when you are exhausted. Do not look for the answer somewhere outside the phrase itself. When doubt becomes so thick that the phrase and the doubter are one single mass, and then that mass breaks open — that is the place the patriarchs could not describe.

tr. Zen Lineage editorial reconstruction, after scholarly sources on Hyesim's method

license: public_domain

Attribution

• Attributed To
  Chin'gak Hyesim

Lineage: Jogye

By Chin'gak Hyesim

• What Is This?proverb
• Silence Speaks the Dharmaproverb
• No Ground to Stand Onproverb
• Poetry and the Great Doubtproverb
• The Broken Monkproverb

Sources

• contentTracing Back the Radiance: Chinul's Korean Way of Zen — Robert E. Buswell

  Robert E. Buswell Jr.

  After Buswell, 'Tracing Back the Radiance' (1991), pp. 98–130, on Hyesim and hwadu investigation

  Seonmun Yeomsong (Anthology of the Seon Gate): On Investigating the Hwadu