by Tang Huyen
One so to speak sets up a lookout post in front of
oneself and looks back at oneself from there.
Eko hensho is likely the Japanese pronunciation for
Chinese hui guang fan zhao — "returning the light to
reflect backward." There is also another Chinese
expression, fan ben huan yuan — "returning to the
root and going back to the source." Basically it means
that in normal dispersion we disperse ourselves in
objects of thought, inner or outer, and let them carry
us along; but here, the technique described by the two
Chinese expressions simply grabs the attention,
gathers it up (and does not let it disperse) and turns it
inward/backward, to look at mind itself, and especially
at the origin of thought, where thought comes from.
The most famous public case in Chinese Chan is "who
is it who is mindful of the Buddha?" — and this inquiry
is carried out on top of the recitation of Amitābha's
name, so that one searches up the stream of
consciousness and looks for the arising of thought,
where the mindfulness of the Buddha's name
originates. The two Chinese expressions are routine
Chinese Chan, and have no particular sectarian
affiliation. They form the foundation of Chan practice
in China.
If one looks at mindfulness, especially mindfulness of
objects of mind, as taught by the Buddha, it is also
the same method of turning the light of attention
inward/backward and focussing it on objects of mind,
without adding anything on top of them, like any
interpretation. This comes to the same thing as the
two Chinese expressions, because as one focuses
on the objects of mind without adding anything on to
them, one automatically wades back up the spring
of thought, in the direction of the very source of
thought, and little by little one gets to where thought
arises, one by one, at which time one can quiesce
them and not give rise to them — and one does this
gently, not forcibly. This full quiescence of thought
is Nirvāṇa, and it is so taught in Chinese Chan and
in the early canon.
In Krishnamurti's The First and Last Freedom, he
says in two places that at the origin of thought,
thought is discrete — that is, there is one thought,
then another thought, with a gap in between, and this
gap is utter silence. In Chinese Chan, it is said that
"thought after thought, one is liberated" (nian nian
jie tuo). There seems to be a hint of the discrete
(non-continuous) nature of thought.
One so to speak sets up a lookout post in front of
oneself and looks back at oneself from there.
Buddhism is all about expanding one's balance and
perspective, softening them, loosening them, and
in the end dropping them altogether. In the meantime,
this reversal of perspective — almost in the literal
sense, in the "returning the light to reflect backward"
and "returning to the root and going back to the
source" — offers a wonderful sense of the relativity
of one's perspective, of lightness of vision, of balance
and perspective. It is like a super-perspective of all
perspectives, even if one hasn't quite got to the
bottom of it yet. And getting to the bottom of it drops
the bottom out, and is Nirvāṇa (which is why it is
said that "All support is unsupported," "All foundation
is unfounded," "All basis is baseless," "All establishment
is unestablished," "All ground is groundless," "All
bottom is bottomless").
There is a rare trend of thought and practice that
rejects any contemplation of mind, any self-examination
and self-reflection. It is invented by the Spanish
Roman Catholic monk Miguel Molinos, and it is
re-invented independently by Hal Hesse. The normal
methods of mental culture in Buddhism, Stoicism,
Daoism involve self-reflection, self-examination,
self-criticality, but this current totally rejects any
such turning of mind back on itself to check up on
itself, and condemns it as caused by a fear-based
mind. Molinos, who founds Quietism, spends his
last years in Vatican prisons for it. Hal Hesse denied
having ever read him, and probably reinvented
Molinos' rejection of self-reflection on his own. No
representative of that trend appears in Chinese Chan
or in Buddhism in general.
Colophon
Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on January 14, 2005, in reply to a thread debating eko hensho and the Zen practice of looking inward at the mind. Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.
The post reconstructs the Chinese Chan lineage behind the Japanese Zen term eko hensho (回光返照, huí guāng fǎn zhào). Tang Huyen's contribution is threefold: (1) connecting the practice to its Chinese foundation and to ordinary Buddhist mindfulness of mind-objects; (2) adding Krishnamurti's corroboration — the discrete, gapped nature of thought at its source — alongside the Chan formula "thought after thought, one is liberated" (念念解脱); (3) noting the counter-tradition of Molinos and Hal Hesse, who reject self-reflection entirely and have no Chan counterpart. The "lookout post" image is one of Tang Huyen's most memorable spatial metaphors: the practitioner sets up a vantage point in front of themselves and looks back at themselves from there.
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
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