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Living Tradition - Sitting Meditation P G 31
The fourth characteristic of the Vo Ngon Thong Zen school is the use of the hua tou (initial phrase). Hua tou are small stories, dialogues between the patriarchs and their disciples, used as a means of practice. The content of the story is called a koan, and a key word or phrase within it is called the hua tou. About 1,700 koans have been collected, but usually only about 500 are practiced. Famous collections of koans include: Blue Cliff Record, Book of Equanimity, Gateless Gate, Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, Transmission of the Lamp, Eyes of Humans and Gods, and Pointing at the Moon Collection.
Practicing with hua tou or koan is not the path of reasoning. It is not a problem that can be solved by thinking or by consciousness. It is like a seed given by the teacher, to be planted in the soil of the mind, which is the store consciousness. The practitioner must water that seed with daily life in mindfulness, nurturing it like a mother hen warming her eggs. When the conditions are sufficient, enlightenment will naturally sprout and burst forth from the store consciousness, not from the searching of the conscious mind. The Vo Ngon Thong Zen school was also the first Zen school in Vietnam to use poetry, short verses, as hua tou for students.
Hua tou and koan have four main functions:
- As a tool of practice to attain enlightenment.
- As a method to examine and test the practitioner.
- As a means to verify and confirm that someone has attained realization.
- As a means to point directly to the ultimate, to indicate the most important thing that the practitioner will attain.
