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The Essence of Ganhwa-Seon (K'an-hua-ch'an) in Chinese Buddhism and its Aspects of Change Cho, Myoung-Hwa (Seowon University) Ganhwa-Seon is a kind of meditation method proposed and practiced by the Southern school of Ch'an (Zen) in Chinese Zen Buddhism which is quite different from the Indian Buddhism. It means "a way of meditation to attain Enlightenment through contemplating the Kōan (literally a "public case")". The early practice method was a very dramatic one in which the teacher monk and the student monk face each other via sayings and doings to enlighten the student. As time went on, student monks, before interviewing the teacher monk, came to practice meditation through contemplating on the anecdotes (or stories) in the books which contained stories behind the enlightenment of patriarchs and the anecdotes between the ancient teacher monks and the student monks. The anecdotes with records of particular dialogues and actions of patriarchs are called Kōan or Old Regulations(古則). Kōan means a textbook officially acknowledged by the Zen Buddhist order, and the Old Regulations means the laws through which the Zen masters passed for enlightenment. These textbooks had titles for each anecdote, so the title of each anecdote began with “~ talk” and its spoken language was two syllabled “thread of discourse (話頭)”. Zen monks of later periods practiced with a Kōan either chosen by the monk himself in accordance with his own taste or given by his master. In this context, the “thread of discourse” was understood as a gate to Enlightenment. The main characteristics of “thread of discourse” are: the use of ordinary language, and illogical and paradoxical language, and the change of grammatical order. The first Zen master who established Ganhwa-Seon is Ta-hui Tsung-kao (1089-1163) in Sung Dynasty. At this time, collections of Kōans and its commentaries were very popular among Zen practitioners, which resulted in the decline of traditional Indian Buddhist meditation method. Despite its main slogan, “No dependance upon words and letters (不立文字)”, the large production of literature (collection of Kōans with verse and prose commentaries, publishing of speeches and sayings of Zen masters) became very popular in the Chinese Zen Buddhism and this indicates that Zen Buddhism finally came to adhere to the dependance on words and letters. Accordingly, the Ganhwa-Seon becomes a “academic Zen”, which signifies its “secularization”, one of the characteristics of Chinese Buddhism. Korean Zen Buddhism imitated this tendency and even until now maintains these traditions extinct since the Sung Dynasty. There are several reasons why Ganhwa-Seon became dominant in Chinese Buddhism. First, the essence of Ganhwa-Seon is that it is the product of Chinese culture which made much of extraordinary words and speeches, namely, the Sinicization of Indian Buddhism. Second, the theory of Sudden Enlightenment became the mainstream in both the non-Zen Buddhism and the Zen Buddhism. Last, a series of “persecution of Buddhism" were mainly focused on the non-Zen Buddhist sects while the Zen Buddhist sect suffered little from these anti-Buddhist measures