Turning the Hearing Back to Hear Its Own Nature

6.2 Turning the Hearing Back to Hear Its Own Nature

At the Śūraṅgama assembly, the World-Honored One put a question to the assembly before Him:

Who is it that has perfect penetration? By which expedient gate did you enter samādhi?

Then twenty-five sages rose one after another, each recounting from which point he had awakened and entered in his own day—the six faculties, the six objects, the six consciousnesses, the seven elements: twenty-five points of entry, twenty-five self-accounts. This is the famous Twenty-Five Gateways of Perfect Penetration.

First fix the two words "perfect penetration." They mean full and unobstructed pervasion—the knots at the faculties once undone, the nature of the one essence of pure luminosity penetrates through without obstruction; with the "perfect penetration" of common speech—smooth and accommodating, adept in the ways of the world—it has nothing whatever to do. Then set the reading of this chapter straight: the Twenty-Five Gateways are most easily taken for a "menu of concentration techniques"—the eye with its method, the ear with its method, twenty-five forks for anyone's choosing. The text's own organization is another thing entirely.

Six Knots in One Cloth

The key to reading the twenty-five gates the Buddha had already handed over earlier, with His own hands. He took up a flowered cloth and, before the assembly, tied it knot by knot into six knots, to figure the six faculties: six knots, out of one same cloth—the bondage of the six faculties, out of one same essence of pure luminosity. To undo these six knots there is no need to undo all six at once, nor can all six be undone at once; one need only set hand at the place of one knot:

Choose, as your mind inclines, among the six faculties: once the knot at the faculty is undone, the marks of its object dissolve of themselves.

All three layers of meaning are in these few words. "Choose among the six faculties"—any one faculty will do; it is not fixed to any one. "Once the knot at the faculty is undone, the marks of its object dissolve of themselves"—what is undone is the knot at the faculty; the knot once removed, the mind's outward flow of climbing along objects stops of itself. And since the six knots come out of one same cloth, when one knot is undone the rest follow—the Buddha calls this "six undone, one gone."

With this the identity of the twenty-five gates stands suddenly plain: they are not twenty-five sets of technique but one single movement—undoing the knot at one faculty, gathering in its outward flow—set down at twenty-five different places of beginning: twenty-five entrances. Look through the closing formulas of the several gates and you will see a set of verbs all facing one way, recurring again and again: the eye-faculty "turning sight back to its origin"; the nose "turning the breath back toward emptiness"; the tongue "returning the taste and reverting the knowing"; the mind-faculty "turning the dharma back to non-being"; Mahāsthāmaprāpta "gathering in the six sense-roots." Turning, returning, reverting, gathering—every word points inward. Twenty-five gates, one same word: gather.

Entering the Stream, the Object Lost

The paradigm of this gathering movement is Avalokiteśvara's own account—the most famous passage in the whole sūtra:

That Buddha taught me to enter samādhi through hearing, reflection, and cultivation. At first, within the hearing, I entered the stream and the object was lost; and the entering once stilled, the two marks of motion and stillness no longer arose at all. Increasing thus by degrees, the hearing and the heard came to an end; not abiding even in the ending of hearing, awareness and its object became empty; the emptiness of awareness brought to its fullness, the empty and what it made empty were extinguished; arising and ceasing once ceased, quiescence stood forth.

"At first, within the hearing, I entered the stream and the object was lost" is the opening step. Ordinarily the ear-faculty, meeting sound, flows outward with the stream—chasing after sounds, the mind turning wherever sound turns: one horn-blast in the street, and the mind is in the street; one idle sentence next door, and the mind is next door. "Entering the stream" is the reversing of that outward flow—no longer racing out after sounds; and so "the object was lost": the sound-marks that were heard are the first to fall away.

The road from there on is the same gathering-in moving from coarse to fine, drawn in layer upon layer: the two marks of motion and stillness do not arise; hearing and the heard alike come to an end; awareness and its object alike become empty; even the empty and what it makes empty are extinguished—until "arising and ceasing once ceased, quiescence stood forth." Reading to this point, old friends from Part One will come forward to claim acquaintance: the scale of the four jhānas is a falling-away layer by layer; the ear-faculty's perfect penetration is also a falling-away layer by layer—only this time what falls away is not jhāna-factors but subject and object. The direction of deepening concentration is always subtraction.

Here the most essential line of defense in the whole chapter must be set: turning the hearing back is not plugging the ears and refusing to hear, not shutting the senses down, still less letting the mind go dull. What the gathering gathers in is the climbing that "turns along with the flow of sounds," not the hearing-nature itself. One commentator discerns this most exactly: in the moment of turning back, the two marks of motion and stillness fall away, while the hearing-nature is like the round illumining of the autumn moon—it illumines yet does not follow. What is gathered is the outflow, not the hearing; what falls away is the sound-marks, not the illumining awareness. To practice the turning-back into a wooden non-hearing is to practice it exactly backward.

Mañjuśrī's Selection: The True Vehicle of the Teaching in This World

When the twenty-five sages had finished speaking, the World-Honored One charged Mañjuśrī to select for Ānanda: of the twenty-five gates, in this world and for these capacities, which gate is easiest to bring to accomplishment? Mañjuśrī's winnowing verses weigh the twenty-four gates one by one, and the ruler he holds has three measures—the pervasive, the complete, and the constant.

Take the eye-faculty: the eye "illumines what lies before but not what lies behind"; behind, it does not see; in the dark, it does not see; its use is not all-round—not pervasive. The nose, the tongue, and the body must be joined with their object before they can function; apart from it, they fail—not universal. So weighed, one by one, each has its limit. The ear-faculty alone passes all three measures: it hears through walls, reaching the far and the near alike—pervasive; though drums be struck in all ten directions at once, the sounds of the ten places are heard together in a single instant—complete; sound arises and ceases, but the hearing-nature does not cease with the sound—in the absence of sound one hears, precisely, its "no-sound," and so the hearing-nature is seen to abide always—constant. Pervasive, complete, constant, all three complete: for gathering in, it is the most fully furnished; to set one's hand there is easiest and takes hold soonest. So Mañjuśrī passes the judgment:

In this world the true vehicle of the teaching is pure in the hearing of sound. Would one take up samādhi?—truly it is entered through the hearing.

This line too must be read with its exact measure. The words "in this world" are a delimitation—they say that in this Sahā world, for the beings of this quarter whose ear-faculty is keenest, the hearing of sound is the most adept gate into samādhi, the one best matched to the capacity. What it adjudges is the ease of the gates and the fit of the capacity; it does not enthrone sound as the one and only truth. Mañjuśrī selects a gate, not a creed.

The close of the winnowing verses is the governing line of the whole chapter:

Turn back the inverted mechanism of your hearing; turn the hearing back to hear its own nature—and that nature, perfected, is the unsurpassed Way. Such, in truth, is perfect penetration.

Turn that inverted hearing-mechanism, flowing outward with the stream, the other way; hear no longer the sound outside—turn back and hear the very nature that hears. The turning, the returning, the reverting, the gathering scattered through the several gates are here drawn into a single line—turning the hearing back to hear its own nature.

And one gate once passed through, what of the rest? Mañjuśrī's verses hold another line, closing back upon the theorem of the knotted cloth: "Once one faculty returns to the source, the six faculties are freed." Six knots, out of one same cloth; one faculty returned to its source, and the bonds of all six fall open. The relation of the twenty-five gates is now thoroughly clear: they are not twenty-five forks leading to different ends but twenty-five entrances opening on one same source. The sūtra closes it with one line that may stand as the eye of the whole chapter:

The return to the source is not two; the gates of expedient means are many.

Many doors, one samādhi. One word in passing: Mahāsthāmaprāpta's gate—"gathering in the six sense-roots, with pure recollection uninterrupted"—the reader of the mindfulness gate will certainly recognize it; the same one door, in volume one, leads to the samādhi of buddha-recollection, and here it is the one word "gather" set on the gate of the faculty-element. The return to the source is not two—here is one more proof of it.

The path is now recognized. But the road of gathering in is no level highway—the deeper one walks, the stranger the states that arise along the way, the finer the forks. The Buddha, at the very point of dismissing the Dharma-seat, turned back of set purpose and gravely added the full terrain of this road.

The next chapter, the fifty skandha-māras.