Almost all people who take up koans from the serious student to the curious wrestle with the words of a koan to find a particular meaning where the light bulb goes on in their head, so to speak. But meaning such as this is not what drives the koan. The koan is not leading us to an intellectual/conceptual denouement. The koan's very construction militates against an intellectual unravelling or some kind of folksy life lesson. Where the koan comes from is ultimate truth which goes beyond the intellect, and any sort of rational analysis. The koan will not give up its treasure to the greedy hands of thought.
You could say that it was Ta-hui (1089–1163) who perfected the use of the koan, taking it away from the clutches of the literati who made koans popular among their class. This is also to say, Ta-hui took the intellect out of the koan. The true meaning of the koan could only come to the adept by way of satori, or the same, gnosis of the true ground of reality. This is where the hua-t'ou enters the koan.
Ta-hui wanted his students to turn their mind, not to their deluded, day to day mental images and thoughts but, instead, to the hua-t'ou which could be represented by the single word such as Chao-chou's wu (J., mu). Each koan offered a key phrase allowing the hua-t'ou to be applied. The hua-t'ou was antecedent to the key word or phrase, hence, 話頭 meaning, exactly, ante-word, or before-thought. This antecedent state was pure Mind before it is stirred becoming, as a result, another deluded thought or dead word. The hua-t'ou of Chao-chou's wu was not another thought or idea, or the subvocal sound wu, far from it. The hua-t'ou was, as the Blue Cliff Records (transl. Shaw) describe it, "the real substance of the universe, the first principle."
Modern efforts to understand the koan have largely failed given the exclusion of the hua-t'ou from practice, for a lack of understanding its true meaning. What is going on in our head, has far as the koan is concerned, has no clue as to the real state of pure Mind. Whenever we say or think wu (or even mu) we are putting a barrier in front of the Dharma gate. The vibration/waves of Mind are obstructing the unstirred, pure Mind. Wu, in this context, is like smoke pointing to the real caloric fire. What was Ta-hui's first koan? It was, “The eastern mountain sails up the river” (some translate, "The east mountain walks on the water"). He made forty-nine tries at it before he broke through on May 13, 1125. He realized the hua-t'ou.
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