Chan’s identification of ultimate reality or true suchness (Ch. zhenru; Skt. bhūtatathatā) with liberation-enacting responsive virtuosity implies that reality is both personal and communicative. Given this, it is not surprising that “public cases” (Ch. gong’an; J. kōan) purportedly recording the encounters of Chan masters and their students came to be the premier Chan literary form and by the mid-Song dynasty constituted a kind of core curriculum for Chan training. But, as noted earlier, Chan also came to represent itself as