In his book Shattering the Great Doubt, late Chan master Sheng Yen suggests that huatou practice is an “intense approach” while silent illumination is a gentler one.

Let’s get clearer about the intensity of huatou practice. You lift the huatou–like Wu or “Who?” or “What is this?”–to full awareness. It might seem as if there’s an urgent need to squeeze, press, sweat. But not so!

Intensity must be raised without tension felt in the body, without a welter of wandering thoughts either.

For this reason, it can be helpful to check in and see whether the body is becoming–in subtler and subtler ways–relaxed. Indeed, where is subtle tension felt? In the back of the jaw? In the depths of the stomach? In the bunching up, if only one centimeter, of the shoulders? See and release. Return. See and release.

The intensity of huatou practice, of Self-inquiry in Ramana’s teaching is very wakeful yet also astonishingly, innocently, freshly calm or still. Without the supreme stillness, no alert wakefulness. Yet without alert wakefulness, no brightness to the stillness.

May we let intensity come to its full expression through, and in concert with, the relaxation of the body and with the non-abiding, non-fixation of the mind.