The mind must still be ‘calmed’ before these methods work, regardless of lineage. However, Zhao Bichen considered his main masters to be two Ch’an Buddhist monks (who together passed on the Wu Liu Daoist lineage to him). Their input added the Ch’an method of ‘hua tou’ to the Daoist practice.
Tag: hua tou method
The Difference Between Gong-an and Ko-an Practice
It is bizarre to consider that as Japan descended into fascism and racism prior to WWII – the distorted, nationalistic Zen Buddhism of that time was popular in the West amongst intellectuals, despite a number of its masters expressing openly hostile attitudes toward the Western people. It is even more bizarre to consider that after WWII – many of these very same masters remained popular as they quietly pushed their formerly racist rhetoric into the background, and applied a more ‘neutral’ policy toward the acquisition of Enlightenment.
