by Tang Huyen

"Because I don't contemplate the sound but contemplate he who contemplates."

The objection is pure a priori reasoning based on mere words. You attack rationalism but you yourself follow a raging kind of rationalism that is based merely on words and no experience. In addition it is incredibly dogmatic, closed-minded and exclusivist, in that it summarily excludes all options other than those chosen by it. In effect you take yourself to be God and can dictate what is possible and what is impossible, without appeal.

Do you read Chinese and Japanese?

Actually the Chinese translates as I translate it. Huí (回) is to turn back, to return; fǎn (反) is to turn something backward (this includes the idea of reacting, revolting, returning good for evil, returning evil for good, treason); therefore huí-guāng fǎn-zhào (回光反照) means to turn back the light and reflect it backward on itself. The expression is also used for people on the verge of death seeing their lives roll again (flash back) in front of them. Huán (還) means to go back, to return; therefore fǎn-běn huán-yuán (返本還源) means to return to the root, to go back to the source. Fǎn-yuán (返源), which is a contraction of fǎn-běn huán-yuán, is used in the third quotation below.

The famous Shurangama scripture (首楞嚴經), which is written in China (and not translated from an Indian work), says quite clearly — here Avalokiteśvara, whose name is wrongly translated into Chinese as "he who hears the sounds of the world," guān-shì-yīn, therefore the section devoted to him in this scripture focusses on hearing — :

"Because I don't contemplate the sound (guān-yīn) but contemplate he who contemplates."

由我不自觀音　以觀觀者

Charles Luk translates:

"Since I myself do not meditate on sound but on the meditator, I cause all suffering beings to look into the sound of their voices in order to obtain liberation."

The Buddha says about Ānanda's accumulation of the various Buddhas' teaching by hearing: "By hearing you hold the Buddhas' teaching, why not hear your own hearing?"

將聞持佛佛　何不自聞聞

Charles Luk translates:

"To hear your very Self, why not turn backward / That faculty employed to hear Buddhas' words."

The Buddha says: "One organ having returned to its source, all six organs accomplish their liberation."

一根既返源　六根成解脫

The Buddha says: "Ānanda and the Great Assembly, should turn back the hearing organ, hear backward into your nature, the nature then becomes the Supreme Way."

大眾及阿難　旋汝倒聞機
反聞聞自性　性成無上道

Charles Luk translates:

"Ānanda and all you who listen here / Should inward turn your faculty of hearing / To hear your own nature, / Which alone achieves Supreme Bodhi."

The words used — among them: fǎn 反 or 返, dǎo 倒 (the latter meaning to turn upside down) — and the whole text and context make clear the turning back of the faculties (including the mind) to work on themselves, as it is said in English: you should hear hearing, listen to listening, be aware of being aware, be conscious of being conscious. It is a doubling up of each faculty to apply itself to itself, recursively.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on March 6, 2008. Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

Tang Huyen was a scholar of Buddhist studies with deep command of Pāli, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan sources. Posting to talk.religion.buddhism and related groups from 2003 to 2008, he was among the most rigorous analytical voices in the English-language Buddhist Usenet world. This post responds to the a priori argument that "awareness cannot be self-aware" — which TH diagnoses as pure conceptual dogmatism with no experiential grounding. His counter-evidence is philological and textual: the Chinese term hui-guang fan-zhao is precisely the technical vocabulary for recursive self-awareness in the Chan tradition, and the Shurangama scripture — which TH notes was composed in China, not translated from Sanskrit — builds its entire soteriology on this recursive turning: hear hearing, contemplate the contemplator, turn the organ back to its source. The four Chinese citations (with characters) are presented in full, with Luk's translation for comparison.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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