Korea Journal of Buddhist StudiesISSN:1598-0642(Print)불교학연구회

By adopting Seon yo 禪要 (Essentials of Seon) as the textbook for seminaries in the late Joseon Dynasty, Korean Ganhwa Seon 看話禪 was directly influenced by Gao-Feng 高峯, rather than following Daehye's 大慧 lineage of Ganhwa 看話. Gao-Feng's 高峯 concept of Gwanhwa 看話 (questioning a koan) as expressed in the Seon yo 禪要 is different from that of Daehye's 大慧 on many points. Daehye focuses on the feeling of doubt 疑情, stating that feelings of doubt would naturally arise and that once accustomed to this feeling, one will notice the burden of Ganhwa practice lessen in the mind. The easing of this burden would become the source of power 得力處 for further practice. In contrast, Gao-Feng said that one should have the conviction that enlightenment will eventually occur about the feeling of doubt, and that one should practice as if to the death at first, eventually discovering the source of power along the way. In other words, Daehye says that as long as one makes an effort to practice the hwadu 話頭 (similar to Jp. koan) in everyday life, the feeling of doubt will emerge without any extra effort and aid one's practice. This is absolutely different from the logic and discipline of Gao-Feng, who says that only after trying to draw a cat in a do-or-die effort will a live cat spring out from the canvas. And yet many disciples of Korean Buddhism has held Gao-Feng’s method of practice as the standard of Ganhwa Seon practice, and dismiss Daehye's method as a kind of hwadu-in-the-making, like Mengshan's 蒙山. However, there is little chance in succeeding with Gao-Feng's ‘Disciplinal Hwadu’ because it requires infinite effort to achieve enlightenment. Thus, today Ganhwa Seon 看話禪 has become ignored by the practitioners of Korean Buddhism while making the task of saving mankind a remote possibility. Therefore, I argue that the cause of Ganhwa Seon's stagnation in Korean Buddhism today originated from Gao-Feng's 高峯 Seon yo 禪要. I conduct a comparative analysis of the Seon yo 禪要 with Daehye's 大慧 Letters 書狀, focusing on their concept of the hwadu 話頭, methods of practice, the process of maintaining the feeling of doubt 疑情, obtaining a source of power 得力處, and their positions on Enlightenment.