Only by Investigating One Huatou Can You Concentrate Your Energy to Break Through the Huatou (2025-03-03)

Ven. Shi Ruyuan: Ever since I listened to your teachings, Master, I have kept in my heart every single word you taught me. When you instructed me, it was as if you had tapped the back of my head—there was a distinct power of blessing, and the blessing was very strong! These past few days I have felt my mind completely blank, with only the words you taught me: "The five aggregates are all false—why then is there still activity of the five aggregates? Contemplate who is dragging this corpse along." Whenever I contemplate these words, I recall your compassionate guidance and instruction, Master, and I am moved to tears.

A few days ago my daughter bought me a movie ticket for Ne Zha 2. While watching the movie with them, I could not close my eyes, so I endured and watched it through. In the past, when watching movies, the sounds from the screen in the theater seemed deafeningly loud, but this time I did not feel there was much noise at all. While watching, I felt as if I were watching images appearing on a screen within my own mind. Before I knew it, more than two hours had passed, and I did not even know what the movie was about. While watching the movie, I was in meditative concentration contemplating how the five aggregates of these people, events, and things operate. I am at all times in samādhi. When in deep meditative concentration, the mind is aware, but it lacks the power to discriminate—it can no longer discriminate the realms of the six sense objects.

I am grateful to you, Master, for teaching us to cultivate meditative concentration. Only in samādhi can one deeply realize the truth that all marks are false and illusory. The thoughts the mind clings to are so illusory—I will never waste time on them again. As long as one applies the mind, whether walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, the mind spontaneously recites and contemplates within: "Who is dragging along this five-aggregate shell of form that can walk, sit, and lie down? Who is the one recollecting the Buddha? Raising a hand or lifting a foot all comes from the place of practice." Or I contemplate such huatous and questioning doubts as "the mechanism of the puppet-like mechanical person arising and functioning" or "the meaning of the Patriarch coming from the West"—who is it that manifests and functions wondrously within the mental sense objects? And who is it that drags this corpse of the five aggregates around everywhere? Whose power is it that, from behind, propels the sentient being of the manas to manifest its wondrous functions at the gateways of the six faculties of body, speech, and mind?

As long as one applies the mind to contemplate with questioning doubt, there arises in the mind an inexplicable stirring of the heart—a feeling that cannot be expressed in words. I am grateful to you, Master, for once again dispelling some of this disciple's foolish and ignorant mind. From now on I will no longer contemplate in a scattered way; I will focus on a single theme, arousing deep contemplation within samādhi to practice and realize for real. Investigating any dharma cannot be separated from meditative concentration; only in deep samādhi can one truly practice and realize. Only through genuine practice and realization can I live up to the immense kindness and virtue of your painstaking instruction over these years, Master.

Assessment: Watching a movie without being attached to the movie's realms is precisely having no mind toward objects—no greed, no grasping, no feeling. This is the emptiness of the true mind, not the false emptiness of verbally speaking of emptiness while clinging to existence. Only after true emptiness, nourished by the waters of samādhi, can one be free of greed and aversion and not give rise to afflictions. Your Chan investigation has become somewhat chaotic—too many huatous and questioning doubts arise in the mind. Investigating just one huatou can resolve all questioning doubts; there is no need to apply the mind to and investigate every doubt. With such chaos and distraction, no result can come from investigation.

Ven. Shi Ruyuan's path of practice is a template. If everyone follows this kind of path, their practice will be swift and direct, without taking detours. Developing wisdom within samādhi is the foundation of practice. Wisdom developed by oneself is genuine and substantial—it can be carried into future lives, never perishing, providing inexhaustible benefit life after life. What is most to be avoided is relying on glib talk—talking grandly without being practical. Even if one speaks so eloquently that flowers fall from the heavens, it is all illusory flowers, of no practical value.