By the time of Hui-neng's death, China was basking in the cultural brilliance of the Tang dynasty. Oddly enough, the sect of Southern Ch'an, which was at odds with the intellectual life of the T'ang, was the Buddhist sect most prospering. The T'ang became the golden age of Ch'an, producing the vast majority of great Zen thinkers as well as the classic techniques for teaching novices. Perhaps the fact that Ch'an was outside the mainstream of Chinese culture during the T'ang period contributed to the independent character of its teachers; during the later Sung dynasty, when Zen became fashionable among scholars and artists, few dynamic teachers were to be found. The main objective of the Ch'an teachers was to inculcate a basically Taoist view of the world using a Buddhist framework. Such famous Taoists as Chuang Tzu had long demonstrated the irrelevance of logical inquiry into the mind through the use of absurdist stories which confounded conventional understanding. To this the Ch'an teachers added the Buddhist teaching that the mind cannot understand external reality because it is itself the only reality. The hand cannot grasp itself; the eye cannot see itself; the mind cannot perceive itself. Quite obviously, no amount of logical introspection can elicit this truth; therefore the mind must abandon its pointless questing and simply float with existence, of which it is merely an undifferentiated part. But how can such a truth be taught? Teaching ideas is the transmission of logical constructions from one mind to another, and the essence of Zen is that logical constructions are the greatest impediment to enlightenment. In answer, the Zen masters took a page from the Taoists and began using nonsense conundrums, later known as _koan_, as well as frustrating question-and-answer sessions, known as _mondo_, to undermine a novice's dependence on rational thought. A new monk would be presented with an illogical question or problem by the head of a monastery, who would then monitor his response. (Examples might include: Why did Bodhidharma come from the West, that is, from India to China? Does a dog have Buddha-nature? What was your face before your mother was born?) If the novice struggled to construct a response using logical thought processes, he faded; if he intuitively and nondiscursively grasped the truth within the _koan_, he passed.