Kangcangzi: “I can see and hear without using ears and eyes, but I cannot exchange their functions”

A minister of Chen, on an embassy to Lu, met Shusun privately. Shusun said: “Our state has a sage.” “Is it not Kong Qiu?” “It is.” “How do you know he is a sage?” Shusun said: “I once heard Yan Hui say: ‘Kong Qiu can set aside the mind and use the body.’” The minister of Chen said: “Our state has a sage too; do you not know of him?” “Who is this sage?” “Among the disciples of Lao Dan there is one Kangcangzi, who has obtained Lao Dan’s Way and can see with his ears and hear with his eyes.” The Marquis of Lu, hearing this, was astonished, and sent a senior minister with rich gifts to invite him. Kangcangzi accepted and came, and the Marquis humbly asked him about it. Kangcangzi said: “Those who spread this are wrong. I can see and hear without using ears and eyes, but I cannot exchange the functions of ears and eyes.” The Marquis said: “That is stranger still. What is this Way? I should very much like to hear of it.” Kangcangzi said: “My body is at one with my mind, my mind with my qi, my qi with my spirit, my spirit with nothingness. Whatever there is, however tiny a thing, however faint a sound, be it far beyond the eight wildernesses or as close as my eyebrows and lashes, if it touches me I am bound to know it. Yet I do not know whether it is perceived by my seven openings and four limbs or known by my heart, belly and six viscera; it simply knows itself.” The Marquis was delighted. Another day he told Confucius, who smiled and did not answer.

The framework quotes only Kangcangzi’s four clauses beginning “my body is at one with my mind”. Read in full, the passage contains something especially worth noting: Kangcangzi explicitly denies “seeing with his ears and hearing with his eyes”. His “seeing and hearing without using ears and eyes” is a state in which one does not know which organ, or whether body or mind, is perceiving (“I do not know whether it is perceived by my seven openings and four limbs or known by my heart, belly and six viscera”), not one sense doing the work of another. The sensory-substitution devices of Chapter 6 do precisely what he disclaims, “exchanging the functions of ears and eyes”: they deliver to the skin or the ears information that belongs to the eyes, and require a device and much training. In this sense Kangcangzi’s words and sensory substitution describe opposite things.

The ending also deserves note: “Confucius smiled and did not answer.” In the narrative of the Liezi this marvellous claim is neither endorsed nor rejected by Confucius, and the dialogue that follows turns to other matters. This chapter does not draw a conclusion on the text’s behalf.

Liezi’s training: “the eye became like the ear, the ear like the nose, the nose like the mouth”

(Liezi tells Yin Sheng how he studied the Way under Lao Shang:) After nine years, I let my mind think whatever it would and my mouth say whatever it would, and no longer knew what was right or wrong, profitable or harmful, for me or for others, nor that the master was my teacher and that man my friend: inner and outer had merged. After that the eye became like the ear, the ear like the nose, the nose like the mouth; there was no difference. My mind concentrated, my body dissolved, bone and flesh all melted; I no longer felt what my body leaned on or what my feet trod, but drifted east and west with the wind like a leaf or a dry husk. In the end I did not know whether the wind was riding me or I was riding the wind.

The framework suspected that this passage might come from “Huangdi” rather than “Zhongni” and asked for a check. The result: in the wording the framework quotes (“there was no difference”, “my mind concentrated, my body dissolved, bone and flesh all melted”), the passage is in the “Huangdi” chapter, where Liezi tells Yin Sheng how he came to “ride the wind home”. The “Zhongni” chapter has an almost identical passage, also about Liezi’s study under Lao Shang, with slightly different wording: “而后眼如耳，耳如鼻，鼻如口，口无不同。心凝形释，骨肉都融；不觉形之所倚，足之所履，心之所念，言之所藏。如斯而已。则理无所隐矣” (after that the eye became like the ear, the ear like the nose, the nose like the mouth, and the mouth was no different; … nor what my mind thought or my words held back; just so, and then nothing in the principle of things was hidden) (杨伯峻 撰 1979). The passage is in both chapters, and quotations should name the chapter they follow.

The context is the sequence of a training in the Way: first not daring to think or speak of right and wrong, profit and harm; then speaking freely without regard to right and wrong; finally the dissolution of the distinctions between “I” and “other”, “teacher” and “friend”. “The eye became like the ear, the ear like the nose” is one outcome of this process: the boundaries between the senses dissolve along with the boundary between inner and outer. It describes a total state of experience, with the weight on “no difference” and “inner and outer merged”, not on one sense acquiring the powers of another.

Zhuangzi, “In the World of Men”: the fasting of the mind

Yan Hui said: “May I ask about the fasting of the mind?” Confucius said: “Unify your will. Do not listen with your ears but with your mind; do not listen with your mind but with your qi. Hearing stops at the ear, the mind stops at what tallies with it. Qi is empty and waits on things. The Way gathers only in emptiness. That emptiness is the fasting of the mind.”

The passage comes from the first story of “In the World of Men”: Yan Hui wants to go to the state of Wei to admonish its tyrannical ruler, and Confucius, judging that all the methods Yan Hui has prepared will bring him to harm, teaches him the “fasting of the mind”, a fast not like abstaining from wine and meat before a sacrifice but one that empties the mind. “Listening with qi” is therefore first a way of conducting oneself in the world: setting aside one’s preconceptions and scheming and meeting things from a state of emptiness.

The text follows the received version, with reference to Chen Guying’s Zhuangzi jinzhu jinyi (The Zhuangzi with Modern Annotation and Translation) (陈鼓应 注译 1983). The translation follows the received wording “听止于耳”: hearing with the ear stops at the ear, and the mind stops at tallying with things. Both are limited, and so one must go further and “listen with qi”.

Read beside modern research, “do not listen with your ears but with your mind” recalls a point from Chapters 3 and 4: perception is not the passive reception of signals by the senses but the brain’s inference from information of several origins. But the resemblance is only one of form. Zhuangzi’s “mind” and “qi” are not processes of inference in cognitive science, and “empty and waiting on things” is not a lowering of the weight on priors. To treat the fasting of the mind as a “technique of multisensory integration” is to leave the text behind.

Śūraṅgama Sūtra, fascicle 4: “thus the six faculties function interchangeably”

If only you do not follow these twelve conditioned characteristics, motion and stillness, union and separation, tranquillity and change, passage and obstruction, arising and ceasing, light and dark, then pull out any one faculty, free it from its adhesion and turn it inward, return it to its original truth, and its inherent light will shine forth. Once that shining nature is manifest, the adhesions of the other five faculties will be pulled out and completely freed. No longer relying on the knowing and seeing produced by external objects, the light does not follow the faculties but merely shines forth through them; thus the six faculties function interchangeably. Ananda, do you not know that in this assembly Aniruddha sees without eyes, the dragon Upananda hears without ears, the goddess of the Ganges smells fragrance without a nose, Gavāṃpati knows tastes with an unusual tongue, and the spirit Śūnyatā feels touch without a body (made momentarily visible in the Tathāgata’s light, being of the nature of wind, it has no body of its own)? Among the śrāvakas who have attained stillness in the samādhi of cessation, such as Mahākāśyapa in this assembly, the mind faculty was long since extinguished, yet he knows perfectly and clearly, without relying on thought.

The framework asked for the fascicle of “the six faculties used interchangeably” to be checked. “Thus the six faculties function interchangeably” is in fascicle 4, where the Buddha explains to Ananda the relation between the faculties and their objects; the passage on “turning the hearing inward to hear one’s own nature”, discussed in volumes 2 and 29, comes from the chapter on Avalokiteśvara’s perfect penetration through the ear faculty in fascicle 6. They are different passages (般剌蜜帝 译 1928). Editions differ in a few characters (such as 黏 and 粘, or 憍 and 驕), and quotations should be checked against the edition used.

The logic of the sūtra is this: the six faculties each attend to one thing because they “follow” external objects and adhere to their respective objects; once one faculty is freed from that adhesion and returned to its original truth, knowing is no longer determined by the faculties but “shines forth through them”, and so the faculties can be used interchangeably. Aniruddha and the others named next are figures and deities of the Buddhist tradition, each with a special power, cited to illustrate this state. This is a religious account of practice and liberation, whose aim is release from attachment to the senses and their objects, not a description of the physiology of the senses.

A note on the text: the origin of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra has long been disputed in Buddhist scholarship, and many scholars consider it to have been composed in China. This does not affect this chapter’s reading of the passage, but it means that the sūtra cannot be cited as evidence that “ancient India already knew some fact of neuroscience”.

Qian Zhongshu’s “Synaesthesia”: the transfer of senses in poetry

“Beyond the mist of green willows the morning chill is light; on the red apricot branch, spring is noisy.” And Li Yu’s objection: “‘Noisy’ means quarrelling with noise. Peach and plum may ‘compete for spring’, but red apricots ‘making a noise about spring’, that I have truly never seen.”

Qian Zhongshu opens “Synaesthesia” with Song Qi’s line. Li Yu objects on literal grounds: “noisy” (nao) means quarrelling with noise; peach and plum “competing for spring” will pass, but apricots “noisy with spring” he has never seen. Qian’s explanation is that the word nao, which describes sound, is here applied to colour and profusion, which is just what psychology and linguistics call synaesthesia, the transfer of sensations: a word from one sensory domain used for another. He gives many more lines that use nao in the same way, such as Yan Jidao’s “the wind blows the plum stamens noisy, the fine rain makes the apricot blossoms fragrant” (钱锺书 1979). On checking, the example and source cited in the framework are correct. In the same essay Qian also quotes the Liezi’s “Huangdi” (“the eye became like the ear, the ear like the nose, the nose like the mouth; there was no difference”), the rumour in its “Zhongni” that Kangcangzi “can see with his ears and hear with his eyes”, and fascicle 4 of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra (“thus the six faculties function interchangeably”), discussing them together with synaesthesia in poetry.

Three things must be distinguished here. First, synaesthesia in poetry is rhetoric and aesthetics: the poet deliberately describes one sense in the words of another, and the reader completes the transfer in understanding. Second, “interchangeable use” and “no difference” in religious and Daoist texts describe experiences in states of practice, aimed at liberation or attainment of the Way. Third, the synaesthesia studied by modern psychology is a stable, involuntary linking of sensations in a minority of people, such as seeing a particular colour on seeing a particular letter; it is a perceptual phenomenon, not a figure of speech. The multisensory integration and sensory substitution of Chapters 3 to 6 are a fourth thing: how every person’s brain combines several senses in everyday perception, and whether, with training and devices, one sense can obtain information normally supplied by another. The four are sometimes run together, but their objects, methods and evidence all differ.

Reading together, and the limits

Within these limits, reading the texts together still has some value. All of them notice that the everyday division of labour among the senses, and the distinction between “inner” and “outer”, are not the only possible shape of perception; modern research has also found that the boundaries between the senses are more elastic than intuition suggests: sound can take over judgements of position when vision is blurred, the visual cortex of blind people can take part in tactile tasks, and training can change the window of temporal integration. But the former are descriptions of experience and guidance for practice; the latter are measurements that can be repeated and refuted. Running the two together adds nothing to the value of the ancient texts and damages the credibility of the modern research.

Chapter summary

Kangcangzi’s “my body is at one with my mind …” is in the “Zhongni” chapter of the Liezi, where he also says plainly that he “cannot exchange the functions of ears and eyes”. “The eye became like the ear, the ear like the nose, the nose like the mouth; there was no difference … my mind concentrated, my body dissolved, bone and flesh all melted”, in the framework’s wording, is in the “Huangdi” chapter, and “Zhongni” has an almost identical passage. The Zhuangzi’s fasting of the mind is quoted from the received text (“hearing stops at the ear”). “Thus the six faculties function interchangeably” is a religious account of practice in fascicle 4 of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra. Qian Zhongshu’s example and Li Yu’s objection check out; poetic synaesthesia is rhetoric. These texts describe experiences of cultivation, meditation or aesthetic appreciation, not psychophysical equations or experiments on cortical reorganisation.