5D Library › Turning the Hearing Inward · 中文
Chapter 1. The Text: Avalokiteśvara’s Account of Perfect Penetration through the Ear
Where the text comes from
Evidence
The Śūraṅgama Sūtra (in Chinese, Lengyan jing) has ten fascicles. Tradition holds that it was translated in the Tang dynasty by Pramiti (Banlamidi); it is number 945 in volume 19 of the Taishō canon (《楞严经》 705 AD). Since the early twentieth century many scholars have doubted that it was translated from an Indian original and have argued that it was composed in China. James A. Benn gives a thorough review of the debate (Benn 2008).
The debate does not affect this book. What matters here is what kind of listening the passage describes and whether that listening can be tested, not who wrote the text. Whatever its origin, the sutra has shaped Chinese Buddhist practice for more than a thousand years, and the chapter on the ear is among its most read and most recited parts.
The setting: twenty-five gates
In the fifth and sixth fascicles the Buddha asks the assembled bodhisattvas and arhats a single question: when you first set out, through which gate did you attain perfect penetration (yuantong)? Twenty-five of them answer in turn. Each names one of the doors of experience as the way in: the six kinds of sense object, the six sense faculties, the six kinds of consciousness, and the seven “great elements”. One entered through sound, one through smell, one through the sense of touch, one through the element of fire. The list is a survey of every door the body offers.
Avalokiteśvara speaks last but one, and his door is the faculty of hearing itself: not the sounds heard, but the ear’s capacity to hear.
Avalokiteśvara’s account
He says he entered samādhi through hearing, reflecting and practising, as follows:
Source text
初于闻中，入流亡所，所入既寂，动静二相，了然不生。如是渐增，闻所闻尽；尽闻不住，觉所觉空；空觉极圆，空所空灭；生灭既灭，寂灭现前。(《楞严经》 705 AD)
The author’s translation: “At first, within hearing, I entered the stream and forgot its objects. When entering had become still, the two marks of sound and silence no longer arose. Advancing step by step, hearing and what is heard both came to an end. Not dwelling in the end of hearing, awareness and what it is aware of became empty. When that empty awareness was perfectly complete, emptiness and what is emptied were extinguished. When arising and ceasing had ceased, stillness appeared.”
The passage describes a sequence. Each step dissolves a division that the previous step left in place: first between the listener and the sounds, then between sound and silence, then between hearing and what is heard, then between awareness and its object, and finally between emptiness and what is emptied. It is a description of meditation, and it is brief to the point of being cryptic. Commentators across the centuries have read it in different ways.
Note · How this book reads it
What follows is the author’s reading, not the text itself, and not the standard interpretation of any school.
- Entering the stream and forgetting its objects: attention goes into the act of hearing itself and stops chasing the sounds that are heard.
- Sound and silence no longer arise: the split between sound and silence stops arising; silence is no longer treated as “nothing to hear”.
- Hearing and what is heard both end: the line between “I am hearing” and “the sound being heard” disappears.
- Not dwelling, awareness becomes empty: even the act of hearing is not held on to, and awareness is not made into an object.
The states the text goes on to describe lie beyond what acoustics can discuss, and the book does not interpret them. The method in this book uses only the first two steps, and only as images for attention.
Why Mañjuśrī chose the ear
When the twenty-five have spoken, the Buddha asks Mañjuśrī which gate best suits Ānanda and practitioners of later times. Mañjuśrī answers in a long verse. He goes through the other gates one by one and finds each harder to use, then chooses Avalokiteśvara’s gate of the ear. The text below has been checked against a transcription of the Taishō edition.
Source text
此方真教体，清净在音闻；欲取三摩提，实以闻中入。
……
大众及阿难，旋汝倒闻机，反闻闻自性，性成无上道，圆通实如是。(《楞严经》 705 AD)
The author’s translation: “In this world the true substance of the teaching is purity in hearing sound. Whoever would attain samādhi enters, truly, by way of hearing. … Assembly, and Ānanda: turn around your inverted faculty of hearing, turn the hearing back to hear your own nature; that nature becomes the supreme path. Perfect penetration truly is like this.”
“The true substance of the teaching is purity in hearing sound” means that in this world the teaching reaches people mainly through sound, so hearing is the most direct way in. “Turn the hearing back to hear your own nature” gives this book its title: ordinary hearing chases sounds outward and is “inverted”; turned around, it listens to the nature that does the hearing.
The argument from silence
Mañjuśrī also gives a reason why hearing, of all the faculties, is suited to the practice. It turns on what happens when a sound stops.
Source text
音声性动静，闻中为有无；无声号无闻，非实闻无性。声无既无灭，声有亦非生；生灭二圆离，是则常真实。(《楞严经》 705 AD)
The author’s translation: “Sound by its nature moves and rests; within hearing it is there and not there. When there is no sound we say that we do not hear, but it is not that hearing has no nature. When sound is absent, hearing has not ceased; when sound is present, hearing has not arisen. Free of both arising and ceasing, this is what is constant and true.”
The same point is made earlier in the sutra with a bell. In the fourth fascicle the Buddha has a bell struck and asks Ānanda whether he hears it; then, when the sound has died away, asks again. Ānanda says that now he does not hear. The Buddha’s reply is that the sound arises and ceases within hearing, but the capacity to hear does not come and go with it: in the silence, Ānanda is still listening.
For a singer this is a practical observation as much as a metaphysical one. Silence is not an absence of listening. The listening that is present between notes is the same listening that is present during them, and it can be attended to directly.
One faculty returns to its source
A little later Mañjuśrī states the promise of the method in two lines that are often quoted on their own:
Source text
一根既返源，六根成解脱。(《楞严经》 705 AD)
The author’s translation: “When one faculty has returned to its source, all six faculties are set free.”
This book does not interpret the claim about liberation. It notes only that the sutra treats the ear as a door: the practice works on one faculty, but its aim is not the faculty itself.
From text to practice
Hypothesis · not established · The Ergen Yuantong method
The author turns this passage into a listening practice for singers. Singers usually put their attention on whether the sound is beautiful and in tune, that is, on “what is heard”. The practice brings attention back to the act of hearing itself, and only then sings. It has three stages:
| Stage | Name | What changes | Image from the text |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Acoustic decoupling | The singer stops trying to make the inner sound match the outer one, and stops squeezing the throat to do so | “turn around your inverted faculty of hearing” |
| 2 | Turning the hearing inward | Attention moves from controlling the voice (output) to listening (input) | “turn the hearing back” |
| 3 | Phonating from the zero point | The note is established inwardly before it is sung; breath and vocal folds meet an inner reference | “within hearing, entered the stream and forgot its objects” |
The author’s hypothesis is that this shift of attention makes a singer’s monitoring of their own voice steadier and less disturbed by nerves, reduces unnecessary effort in the muscles around the larynx, and so improves pitch accuracy. There is no evidence for this yet. Chapters 2 to 6 discuss the physiology and physics it might correspond to; Chapter 7 sets out the daily practice; Chapter 8 sets out a test.
Note
The table pairs each stage with a phrase from the text because the phrase is a good image for it, not because the sutra describes singing. The sutra describes a meditation whose goal is not a better voice. Readers who come to the book for the meditation should read the sutra and its commentaries; readers who come for the voice should treat the scripture as a source of images, not of instructions.
Summary
- Perfect penetration through the ear comes from the sixth fascicle of the Śūraṅgama Sūtra; the sutra’s origin is debated, which does not affect this book.
- Avalokiteśvara’s account describes a sequence in which divisions dissolve one after another: listener and sound, sound and silence, hearing and heard.
- Mañjuśrī chooses the ear because hearing does not cease when sound ceases.
- This book reads “entering the stream” and “turning the hearing back” as attention turning from the objects of sound to listening itself. That is the author’s reading, and the three-stage method built on it is a hypothesis to be tested.
References
Fan, Y. (2026). Turning the Hearing Inward: A Bioacoustic Study of the Ergen Yuantong Listening Method [反闻闻自性] (Version 1.0.0). 5D Library. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23666557 · Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).