Unblocking the Gateless Gate: From Divided Effort towards Wholehearted Practice

A dharma talk by Alex Carroll, given to the Seon Meditation Sangha in the United Kingdom on 23 April 2026.

Unblocking the Gateless Gate

I am not the baker in my household. I am the cook, but I rarely follow recipes. Instead, I cook by instinct and improvise as I go. Baking, however, is a different matter. As much as I admire a well-made loaf of bread, I am really quite terrible at baking. My way of working simply does not translate. My husband, Niels, is the baker. Several times a week he makes a loaf of bread, and he’s quite good at it because he has the skills I lack: patience, method, a light touch. These are the qualities that turn flour and water into something nice.

One day I watched him while he was mixing the dough in the kitchen. At first, it was a mess. As he started to mix the dough, little clouds of flour flew out of the bowl, little splashes of water landed on the countertop. Some parts of the dough were wet and sticky, other parts were dry and lumpy. Once a shaggy ball of dough came together, he emptied the contents onto the counter and started kneading it. Completely focused on the ball of dough, he kneaded steadily into its center, putting all of his concentration and body weight into it with smooth, flowing motions of his arm and hand. Slowly, that messy pile of flour, water, yeast and salt transformed into a smooth, beautiful, elastic ball of dough on the countertop.

Most of us are a bit like that messy dough when we meditate. Sure, there are the beginnings of a ball of dough in the bowl, but there are dry parts here, wet parts there, bits of flour scattered across the countertop and little pools of water. We haven’t come together to form a beautiful ball of dough yet.

Likewise, when many of us practice, only part of our attention is actually with the “ball of dough.” Another part stands off to the side watching, evaluating, and commenting on everything that is happening. A small voice says: “Am I doing this correctly?” “Maybe I should try a different approach.” “This isn’t working, my mind is too busy today.” Sometimes we even begin to doubt the practice itself, or whether we are capable of it.

But if a baker constantly follows every little thought and worry, the bread will never come together. Imagine a baker who keeps interrupting the process to second guess every step: “Did I measure the ingredients correctly? This dough seems too wet. Maybe I should add more flour. Now it seems too dry. Should I add more water? Am I kneading the right way? Am I doing this right? Maybe I should just throw this batch out and try again later.” If they keep doing this, they will spend all their time making small corrections and never simply commit to making the dough. The dough will never have a chance to form.

In Seon teachings, this is often called practicing with the discriminating or thinking mind. It is the aspect of the mind that splits experience into self and other, right and wrong, success and failure, good and bad. It is constantly thinking, commenting, analyzing, labeling, and judging. Always evaluating the present moment and trying to make it conform to an idea of how we think things ought to be. Because this activity is so natural to us, it often goes unnoticed and we unknowingly bring the thinking mind straight into our practice.

When part of the mind steps aside to evaluate and judge what is happening, we divide our energy. One part is practicing, another part is thinking about the practice. But the Way cannot be found through reflection, analysis, strategizing, or constant tinkering. As long as the thinking mind remains in the middle of the practice, the energy of the practice cannot gather. Only when we give ourselves completely to the questioning can the practice begin to deepen.

The basic instructions for hwadu practice are relatively straightforward. Relax your body and mind, and raise the hwadu as a real, living question. Arouse a genuine sense of doubt. If the mind offers intellectual or analytical answers to the hwadu, simply let them go and return to the questioning. If you become lost in thought, recognize it, repeat the hwadu once or twice, and gently return to the questioning. In daily life, through all four postures of sitting, standing, walking, and lying down, repeatedly raise the hwadu and maintain this continuous investigation.

The essential element of the practice is doubt, or what we might call a deep, sustained interest. We must practice with a sincere desire to understand the meaning of the hwadu, a compelling urge to get to the bottom of this matter. Of course, we are not trying to find the answer ourselves, and we are certainly not thinking about what the answer could be. We are simply asking the hwadu with genuine interest, trusting that the hwadu will reveal the answer when the time is right. 

The instructions do not ask us to monitor the practice, evaluate the experience against our self-imposed expectations, reflect in real time, or worry about how it’s going. Yet we often fall into this habit. When we do, we are reinforcing the thinking mind, the very dualism that veils our original nature. When we start analyzing our practice, we are in effect blocking the gateless gate that our ancestors left open for us.

I often read the writings of the great Chinese Chan and Korean Seon masters from the previous centuries. I enjoy the letters written between the great ancestors and their students, especially their lay students. Once you become accustomed to their medieval style of writing, a remarkably relatable and human conversation becomes apparent, one that is still highly relevant for us today. It is very clear that many of the issues that face meditators today were also problems for lay people many centuries ago.

After the semi-mythical figures of Bodhidharma and the Sixth Ancestor Huineng, Dahui Zonggao, who lived and taught in twelfth-century China, is arguably the most influential master in the history of Seon. He was the first to clearly systematize hwadu practice and spent much of his lifetime advocating its use. His approach shaped the Seon School to the present day. Dahui showed particular concern for the educated lay elites of his time, the literati who held positions in government and intellectual life. The elite literati of this era lived under an intellectually demanding system. They were trained from childhood in classical texts, literary composition, and disciplined reasoning within a highly competitive examination culture. Their success and status depended on intellectual sharpness and mastery of complex texts, legal documents, and administrative skills.

In this respect, there are some similarities between these literati and us modern practitioners. From a young age, we move through long educational trajectories, often culminating in advanced university degrees. Of course, modern people live far more hectic and stressful lives, but like the literati, most of us have extremely sharp and developed thinking minds. Like them, we jump into practice ‘headfirst,’ so to speak.

Dahui repeatedly warned his lay students that bringing the thinking mind into practice is a major hindrance to awakening. In one letter, he writes, 

“When you keep your attention on this [hwadu], there is no need to rely on your usual cleverness or sharp intelligence, or to engage in mental reflection and conjecture. If you do reflect and speculate on it, you will be 108,000 miles away from the Way, even though the Way itself is not far off.” 

In another letter, Dahui responds to a student named Vice Minister Chen. Chen writes that he earnestly applied himself to hwadu practice but found himself unable to make progress. Despite the intelligence required to hold a high ministerial office, he concludes that he is simply not smart or learned enough. Dahui replies,

“If [it] were actually the case [that you were dull-witted], I should have to congratulate you. The reason most members of today’s scholar-official class are incapable of comprehending this matter and decisively attaining release is simply that their disposition is too intellectually sharp and their knowledge excessive.”

In other words, one of our greatest obstacles to awakening is not that we are not smart enough or that we fail to understand the teachings. The obstacle is that we try to approach the practice with the thinking mind. We assume that if we were smarter, analyzed more carefully, or understood more deeply, the breakthrough would come. But hwadu practice cannot be resolved through reasoning or cleverness. The very habit of practicing with the thinking mind is exactly what keeps us circling around the truth that is already right in front of us.

Living the Doubt

The great masters in our tradition are very clear that this practice is something practiced with the whole being. Again and again, they use language that points to a fully embodied way of investigating the hwadu. The Chinese master Wumen Huikai (1183–1260), in his commentary on the famous mu gong’an in the Gateless Gate, writes: 

“With your 360 bones and 84,000 pores, the whole body must become a single mass of doubt.”

Notice that he does not say the mind must be filled with doubt. He places doubt in the whole body, in our physical existence. This shifts the center of gravity of practice from the mind to the body, from a mental exercise to something lived and embodied. In the same spirit, the great Korean Seon master Kusan Sunim, whose lineage we practice in, once said in a dharma talk:

“When going, the hwadu goes; when coming, the hwadu comes; when eating, the hwadu eats; when sleeping, the hwadu sleeps. Even when going to the toilet and defecating, you must investigate earnestly.”

Here again, the emphasis is not on a particular mental state or quality of mind. The hwadu is investigated with the body, inseparable from ordinary acts of walking, eating, resting, even defecating. Both masters are pointing out something very important: practice is not something we do only with our heads while quietly sitting on a meditation cushion. It’s something we do with our entire being. 

In my own practice, and in the way I teach hwadu meditation, I begin by taking a few moments to feel my body and become settled in it. I become aware of the weight of the body, the contact with the cushion, the solidity and presence of the whole physical form, allowing awareness to naturally sink down into the body. From within this grounded and unified field, I gently bring up the hwadu. It is not directed from the head, but arises as if the whole body is filled up with the hwadu. After some time, it can feel as though I am just a shell, and the hwadu takes the shape of my body as it sits there. The boundaries between inside and outside, between body and mind, and between me and the environment soften into a single field of experience.

If I were to add my own image for what it means to practice with the whole person, I would say it is like a sponge immersed in water. A sponge has its own shape, yet it is surrounded on all sides by water and soaked through completely. At a certain point it becomes difficult to say where the sponge ends and the water begins. In the same way, when we are fully immersed in doubt, the borders between mind, body, and environment begin to blur. And once the great doubt appears in our practice, the questioning is no longer something we are deliberately doing, but begins to take on a momentum of its own. It becomes so strong that the distinction between 'me who is practicing' and 'the hwadu I am working on' falls away, and our whole being becomes engulfed in the questioning.

A Few Caveats

The danger in speaking about these issues is that some people will hear this and inadvertently divide their effort even further. They may think, “Ah, now I understand what I should be doing. I just need to watch for any background analysis or reflection,” and then sit down and begin monitoring their meditation even more than before. But this is not correct. The way to avoid dividing the mind is very simple: put your whole life behind the question and ask in a sincere and wholehearted way to the exclusion of all else. Your mind and its contents will constantly change, but pay it no attention. Just keep going straight, no detours.

Others may hear these vivid statements about giving your whole being to the practice and interpret them out of context. They begin to grasp at or push into the doubt, using excessive force and effort. This is a misguided and unsustainable way to practice, and it quickly leads to dizziness, tension, and headaches. As the Buddha taught in the Sona Sutra, we must maintain balance and use moderate effort. When the strings of a lute are too tight or too loose, they do not sound well. Only when they are tuned neither too tight nor too loose do they produce a clear and beautiful sound. In the same way, when the body is relaxed and the mind calm but alert, the practice can continue sustainably.

Conclusion

What all of this points to is very simple: stop trying to figure practice out with the thinking mind and just do it. Just follow the method and do not add anything to it. Plunge directly into the heart of the question, become genuinely interested in it, and investigate it sincerely. Work the hwadu the way a baker works dough, steadily kneading it with your whole being. Put down the thinking mind and give yourself completely to the hwadu, with a sincere desire to know the answer. Do not concern yourself with anything else. If you practice in this way, you are sure to get to the bottom of this great matter.

At first the practice may feel scattered, like flour and water that have not yet come together to form dough. But if you continue staying with the doubt in this way, something begins to change over many weeks and months. The scattered pieces gradually gather, and the questioning begins to fill the whole body. Just as flour and water slowly become a single smooth ball of dough, our divided mind gathers into a single mass of doubt. And then one day, when the mass of doubt suddenly breaks open, you will realize that what you were searching for has been here from the very beginning.

Sources

Wumen Huikai. The Gateless Gate (Wumenguan). Translations by Koun Yamada.

Dahui Zonggao. The Letters of Chan Master Dahui Pujue. Translated by Jeffrey L. Broughton and Elise Yoko Watanabe.

Chinul (Jinul). Tracing Back the Radiance: Chinul’s Korean Way of Zen. Translated by Robert E. Buswell Jr.

Kusan Sunim. The Way of Korean Zen. Translated by Martine Batchelor.

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