What Is a Gong'an?

Originally, gong'an meant case files handled by public offices — legal matters with no precedent to guide them. In Chan, however, the word refers to individual accounts of ancient Chan masters' awakenings. These are stories of encounters between the patriarchs and their disciples throughout Chan history, and most of them seem utterly unreasonable by ordinary standards.

To someone with a shallow grasp of Chan, or unfamiliar with what Chan practice actually involves, a gong'an can sound like nothing more than the ravings of madmen. As a rule, the easier and more transparent a gong'an is, the more elementary it is; the more baffling and semantically opaque, the more advanced.

During the 250 years after the Sixth Patriarch Huineng, Chan flourished. From Huineng's direct disciples, through the fourth generation of masters including Zhaozhou, Huangbo, and Weishan, to the fifth-generation figures like Linji, Yangshan, and Deshan, this sudden-awakening method helped countless people awaken.

All in all, there are around 1,700 of these Chan gong'an. Before the Northern Song, no one had thought to gather or organize them. Then, during the Northern Song, Fenyang Shanzhao compiled One Hundred Gong'an of Former Sages, using the stories in it to pose questions: Why did the patriarchs awaken after behaving in just this way? The practice of asking such questions again and again is what we call investigating a gong'an.

Once a student reaches a certain stage in practice, the teacher may point out a particular gong'an to investigate. Working with it helps the student move further along. But if a less skilled teacher hands out a gong'an at random — one that doesn't match the student's condition — the investigation will go nowhere.

Investigating a gong'an isn't about guessing or speculating, nor is it a matter of working things out intellectually. You can't crack one open with common sense or Buddhist learning either. Plenty of people have written books explaining gong'an — but that's all explanation, not investigation, and it has nothing to do with actual awakening. So, can a gong'an be explained? Of course. But for the purposes of Chan practice, analyzing a gong'an gets you nowhere.

Until you've awakened to a gong'an yourself, it remains just a tool. It's only after awakening that its living spirit comes through. You can't reach the heart of a patriarch's awakening through reasoning or imagination. You have to arouse a great doubt around the question the gong'an poses — and hold the question without trying to resolve it on your own through logic.

Even after you've awakened to a gong'an, you can't fully lay out its meaning in words for someone else. You can only seek confirmation from someone further along than you, or of equal attainment — gesturing, acting things out, looking for recognition. This is called a mind-to-mind seal.