Do not distinguish between a hwadu that is right or not right for oneself. There is no good and bad in hwadu themselves. It is just that according to the person there are hwadu that are taken up well and those that are not. The karma that is matured over billions of eons differs person to person, and so among the practice methods there are some that are right for one and others that are not.  There are some hwadu, according to the individual, that produce doubt well and others that do not. This means that according to the personality that the practitioner is born with or gained through the course of their life, there clearly are hwadu that excite an earnest doubt.  Looking at this point, the teacher who can select well a hwadu that is right for the crux of the practitioner we call a clear-eyed lineage teacher.

 

The hwadu is a wonder drug used by the teacher that is pertinent and matches each different practitioner’s ability. The teacher gives a person who is attached to non-existence a hwadu to awaken that practitioner to that attachment, and to a person who is attached to existence he gives a hwadu in order to awaken that person to that existence. In doing so, the practitioner will easily catch doubt about the hwadu presented by the teacher.

 

It is not proper for the practitioner to judge by themselves whether or not the hwadu given by the master is right or not right for one. To say “right and not right” itself means one has already fallen into discrimination. One must doubt the hwadu given by the master. Not investigating the hwadu and establishing the right and wrong of it is to be mistaken in one’s mental resolution, for that arises because one’s belief in the master is insufficient.

 

A hwadu is an extremely sharp sword that at a stroke cuts off mistaken views such as empty cleverness and the mind of birth and death. Therefore in hwadu there are no good hwadu or bad hwadu. Moreover, there are no separate hwadu that are right or not right for one. One must consider the hwadu that one has received oneself, no matter what hwadu it is. All are good teachings that were presented in order to find one’s own original face. And so one must take up the hwadu presented to one and earnestly give rise to doubt.  But if the teacher examines one and presents one with another hwadu, as the hwadu one had taken up until then had been unsuitable, one can change it and try the other.

 

But before the teacher presents one again with hwadu, even though the hwadu one is investigating does not give rise to a genuine doubt and then immediately it does not seem to be right for one, if one takes it up very earnestly, there will be a time when a genuine doubt occurs. And when occasionally the hwadu is not well taken up, one must constantly seek the teacher and find a method of increasing one’s mental resolution. And so one resolves the mind and resolves the mind again, and one must work to produce doubt.