The Lengyanjing (Śūraṃgama Sūtra) reaches what is arguably its philosophical and soteriological center in the description of a method of Buddhist practice declared by Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva (Ch: Guanyin Pusa). This method consist of a form of concentration and contemplation of the faculty of hearing. The actual description of the method, however, is terse and ambiguous in the original Chinese text, and has lent itself to radically divergent interpretations over the centuries, representing diverse readings both philologically and philosophically. The interpretation of this passage, reflected even in the very way in which the specific characters of the text and how they are parsed, depends heavily on the school of Buddhism to which the exegete belongs and the dominant concerns of Chinese Buddhist culture at the time of the work. Master Shengyen offers a detailed exegesis of this passage in his book Guanyin Miaozhi: Guanyin pusa ergen yuantong famen jiang yao (觀音妙智：觀音菩薩耳根圓通法門講要) (Avalokiteśvara’s Wondrous Wisdom: Lectures on the Essence of Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva’s Dharma-gate of Perfection of the Organ of the Ear). In this paper I examine this passage and its various interpretations, including that of Master Shengyen, together with the elaboration on the organ of hearing and its implications found in the gatha of Mañjuśrī which follows Avalokiteśvara’s soliloquy in the sutra, comparing these interpretative stances and attempting to elucidate what is at stake in the various approaches and hermeneutic decisions involved. This gives us a basis from which to consider the philosophical implications of this privileging of the sense of hearing over all other senses, as well as over all other specific practices and mental operations, for Buddhist practice and the attainment of the realization of the absolute or unconditioned state of liberation, the omnipresent and always-operating ground of all experience which on the one hand transcends subjectivity and objectivity, and on the other fully includes both subjectivity and objectivity, thereby integrating them into one another, such that all objectivity is subjective-objective, and all subjectivity is objective-subjective, in both cases properly speaking neither subjective nor objective. The exact implications of this idea are brought into dialogue with attempts to elucidate the nature of the unconditioned, and its unification and transcendence of objectivity and subjectivity, in certain Western philosophical figures (notably Spinoza and some of the post-Kantian German Idealist philosophers), as well as the trend in late 20th century phenomenology which has discerned a prejudice toward an “ocularcentric” paradigm in traditional Western philosophical conceptions of Being (e.g., Levinas’ critique of Heidegger) and the trend toward a reconsideration of the implications of a shift to an aural paradigm (e.g., in works such as David Michael Levin’s The Listening Self). We will conclude with some further reflections on the far-reaching implications of the difference between the conception and experience of the Absolute as derived from an ocular paradigm and that derived from an aural paradigm.
1. Introduction 113 2. Five Traditional Readings of the Key Passage 114 3. Interpreting the Five Readings 116 4. Synoptic View of the Diverse Interpretations 130 5. Implications for General Ontology, Ethics and Epistemology 135 中文摘要 145
