a Song-dynasty Chan school that was looking back to
an age of semimythical ancestors. Song Chan masters
themselves are almost never the subject of koan sto-
ries. An important audience for this literature has al-
ways been the secular educated elite, whose support
has been crucial to the fortunes of all the East Asian
Chan schools.
KanhuaChan
In the eleventh century, some Chinese Chan masters
began to assign particular koans to individual students
to ponder; in several accounts such mulling over a
koan is reported to have led to an enlightenment ex-
perience for the student. Initially, this seems to have
been a general contemplation of the koan that was not
specifically associated with formal meditation.
However, in the twelfth century a new meditative
technique developed in which the koan became the
subject of intense reflection. This form of meditation,
which had no counterpart in traditional Indian med-
itation practice, became known as kanhuaChan (Ko-
rean, kanhwa So ̆n; Japanese, kanna Zen; “Chan of
observing the key phrase” or “koan introspection
Chan”) and was first formulated by Dahui ZONGGAO
(1089–1163) of the Linji Chan tradition. Dahui di-
rected his students to meditate on the crucial part of a
koan, the huatou(Korean, hwadu; Japanese, wato; crit-
ical phrase, keyword, or punchline). In Dahui’s fa-
vorite koan, “Zhaozhou’s dog,” the word wu(no) is
the huatou.According to Dahui, prolonged and in-
tense attention to the huatou,maintained not only in
sitting meditation but in all activities, will cause a huge
“ball of DOUBT” to form, which will eventually burst
into an enlightenment experience.
Scholars have commonly accepted the Chan school’s
own view of the development of kanhuaChan as a
response to a “spiritual decline” in the Song and an
effort to preserve the wisdom and insights of the
great Tang Chan masters. However, in “The ‘Short-
cut’ Approach of K’an-HuaMeditation” (1987) Robert
Buswell argues that kanhuaChan can be better un-
derstood as a culmination of internal developments in
Chan “whereby its subitist rhetoric came to be ex-
tended to pedagogy and finally to practice.” In “Silent
Illumination, Kung-anIntrospection, and the Compe-
tition for Lay Patronage in Sung-Dynasty Ch’an”
(1999) Morten Schlütter suggests that Dahui champi-
oned kanhuaChan, in large part, as a corrective to the
MOZHAOCHAN(Japanese, mokusho; silent illumina-
tion) meditation that was taught in the rival Caodong
tradition of Chan, which Dahui condemned as qui-
etistic and not leading to enlightenment. Dahui seems
especially concerned that Caodong masters were teach-
ing silent illumination to members of the secular ed-
ucated elite, and competition for patronage was clearly
an element in the dispute.Koan use after Dahui
Dahui’s development of kanhuaChan exerted an enor-
mous influence on koan use and Chan meditation in
all of East Asia. However, it is important to be aware
that the older practices of koan study and koan com-
mentary were never abandoned and continued to ex-
ist alongside the practice of kanhuaChan.
In Japan, kanhuaChan was taken up in the Rinzai
(Chinese, Linji) sect of Zen, where koans were even-
tually systematized by the reformer HAKUINEKAKU
(1686–1768) and his disciples into a curriculum of
five main levels. Students meditate on the huatou
(Japanese, wato) of a series of koans and have to pass
each koan in meetings with the Zen master (known as
sanzenor dokusan) by giving the answers considered
correct in their Zen master’s particular lineage. The
answers, and answers to related follow-up questions,
are supposed to be kept secret, but, in fact, crib-sheets
exist. However, Zen masters are thought to be able to
distinguish an answer that demonstrates true insight
(Japanese, kensho) from one that has simply been
memorized. Finishing the entire koan curriculum to
the satisfaction of the Zen master ends the training of
a student, who is now ready to function as a Zen mas-
ter. However, completing the curriculum takes many
years, and most students leave long before completion
to take over their family temples.
The founder of the Japanese Soto (Chinese,
Caodong) sect of Zen, DOGEN(1200–1253), who be-
came heir to the Caodong tradition of Chan, did not
advocate kanhuaChan meditation, and it has never
been employed in the Sotosect. However, Dogen of-
ten commented on koans as a means of instruction,
and medieval Sotostudents were formally trained in
koan commentary. After reforms in the eighteenth
century the Sotosect sought to differentiate itself from
the Rinzai sect and koan use became rare in Soto.
In Korea, Dahui’s kanhuaChan quickly took root,
mainly through the efforts of the great So ̆n master
CHINUL (1158–1210) and his disciple HYESIM
(1178–1234), and kanhuaChan eventually came to
dominate Korean Buddhist meditation practice. In
Korean So ̆n, a student will usually only contemplate aKOAN