一、這個概念在說什麼
The classical definition is precise: 見聞 refers to the experiential cognition that arises when the visual and auditory sense organs (眼根 *yángēn* and 耳根 *ěrgēn*) meet their corresponding sense objects (色塵 *sèchén* and 聲塵 *shēngchén*). It is, in plain terms, the cognitive event of *seeing a form and hearing a sound*. But in the Chan record this is only the surface. What the masters are actually pointing at is the whole *event* of perception-and-grasping — the moment when an eye meets a color, an ear meets a tone, and a mind does what minds do: name, compare, store, want, reject. 見聞 is not "raw sensory data" the way a microphone records sound. It is perception already loaded with subject and object, already structured by the five aggregates (五陰/五蘊, *wǔyīn/wǔyùn*).
The three records I am drawing from —《古尊宿語錄》(*Gǔ Zūnsù Yǔlù*, "Recorded Sayings of Ancient Worthies"),《景德傳燈錄》(*Jǐngdé Chuán Dēng Lù*, "Jingde Transmission of the Lamp"), and《宏智禪師廣錄》(*Hóngzhì Chánshī Guǎnglù*, "Extensive Record of Chan Master Hongzhi") — all use 見聞 as a fixed term. They do not invent alternative translations. And they do something striking: they treat 見聞 as simultaneously the disease and the medicine, the bondage and the door.
The Three-Form Structure
The materials give us a structural map that must not be collapsed:
1. 聲色 (shēngsè, "sounds and forms") — the *objects* that appear. The traffic noise, the screen image, the partner's face, the notification sound.
2. 見聞 (jiànwén, "seeing and hearing") — the *activity* of perceiving-and-grasping. Not just the eyes and ears but the whole cognitive apparatus engaged with what appears.
3. 非見聞 (fēi jiànwén, "not-seeing-hearing") — the freedom that is neither a rejection of the first two nor a third place somewhere else. It is the same seeing-hearing no longer binding.
These three are not three stages in a sequence. They are three dimensions of one event, like the inside, outside, and edge of a single coin.
The Pivotal Formulation: 即此見聞非見聞
The most important verse in the corpus is the 三平頌 (Sānpíng's颂, attributed to Chan master Sanping), cited repeatedly across the records:
即此見聞非見聞，無餘聲色可呈君。 箇中若了無餘事，體用無妨分不分。 *This very seeing-hearing is not seeing-hearing; no remaining sounds and forms can be presented to you. If within this you understand there is no remaining matter, then essence and function do not obstruct whether they are divided or not.*
This is not a metaphysical claim. It is a diagnostic. The phrase 即此 ("this very") is the whole point. The masters are not pointing somewhere else — to a trance, a void, a different state of consciousness. They are pointing *at* the moment of seeing and hearing itself, and saying: this very moment, if you don't pin the sounds and forms down as objects to be had, is already free. The verse that follows it in《古尊宿語錄》spells out the consequence: 體用無妨分不分 ("essence and function do not obstruct whether divided or not"). The "essence" of seeing-hearing and the "function" of forms and sounds are not two things that need to be glued together; they are never apart. The apparent separation was always the activity of grasping.
The Disease Is in the Grasping, Not in the Objects
One of the most important moves in the Chan material is the relocation of the "disease." Multiple sources are emphatic:
聲色不到處，病在見聞。 *Where sounds and forms do not reach, the disease is in the seeing-hearing.* (《古尊宿語錄》)
聲色不到，病在見聞；言詮不及，過在脣舌。 *When sounds and forms do not reach, the disease is in seeing-hearing; when words cannot explicate, the fault is in lips and tongue.* (Longji Shaoxiu 龍濟紹修,《景德傳燈錄》)
The first half is decisive. The "disease" (*bìng*) is not in the forms, not in the sounds, not in the screen, not in the partner, not in the news. The disease is in the *activity of seeing-hearing* — that is, in the mind's automatic project of making what appears into an object it can hold, possess, judge, or reject. You can be sitting in total silence, in a perfectly dark room, with no external sound or form reaching you, and the disease is still operating: the mind is still "seeing" its own images, "hearing" its own commentary, and grasping at those too.
The second half of the verse extends the diagnosis to language (言詮 *yánquán*). The fault of *脣舌* (lips and tongue) is the same fault at a different orifice. This is important, because the Chan record insists that 見聞 is not limited to raw sense-perception. The《宏智禪師廣錄》states: if you have not even penetrated a hair's breadth, you are "thoroughly swept along by all language flowing within seeing-and-hearing" (盡被一切語言流轉於見聞中). Modern consciousness is almost entirely mediated by language: we see through names, hear through categories, "experience" through concepts. So 見聞, as the Chan masters use it, includes the whole linguistic-cognitive stream. This is why the cure is not sensory deprivation (which would just be the same disease attacking a different orifice).
The Warning Against the Wrong Cure
The masters are not subtle about this. They explicitly reject two wrong exits:
- Clinging to seeing-hearing as ultimate — 一向認取見聞為究竟 ("taking seeing-hearing as the final"). This is the ordinary person's trap. The screen is real. The news is real. The grievance I witnessed is real. Therefore I am right, and they are wrong, and the world is exactly as I have seen and heard it. The三平頌calls this "not seeing that which does not darken" (不見那不昧處).
- Trying to abolish seeing-hearing — 有見有聞是凡夫，無見無聞是二乘 ("Having seeing-hearing is the ordinary being; having no seeing-hearing is the two vehicles"). The two vehicles (二乘, *èrshéng* — śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas) try to escape the senses by closing them down. The Chan verdict is blunt: this is not the ultimate. The materials say it is not that you should lie on a long bench, close your eyes, and call that "no seeing" (不是長連牀上閉目合眼喚作無見). True seeing through is not blindness.
The right move is the one the record keeps returning to, in variant language:
不離見聞，識取無見聞底。居見聞之境而見聞不到。 *Not departing from seeing-hearing, recognize that which is without seeing-hearing. Dwelling in the realm of seeing-hearing, yet seeing-hearing does not reach [it].* (《古尊宿語錄》)
And the beautiful line in the long verse:
眼不可見，耳不可聞，非見非聞，宛爾見聞。 *The eye cannot be seen, the ear cannot be heard; neither seeing nor hearing, yet seemingly seeing-hearing.* (《古尊宿語錄》)
The "seemingly" (宛爾) does all the work. Things still appear. Forms are still seen. Sounds are still heard. But the activity of *making them into a world of solid objects that I possess or am threatened by* has quietly fallen away.
The Metaphors, Held Apart
The records use a cluster of metaphors that must not be flattened into a single image:
- 見聞不脫，如水中月 ("Not free of seeing-hearing is like the moon in water,"《景德傳燈錄》). The image is vivid, present, even beautiful — but you cannot step onto it or scoop it up. When you try to grasp what is seen and heard as solid, you get the moon in the water.
- 水月鏡像，夢幻施陳 ("Moon in water, mirror image, dream and illusion, all displayed,"《古尊宿語錄》). This is not a claim that the world is unreal. It is a description of what seeing-hearing becomes when it is no longer binding: like reflections in water and mirrors, like dreams, vivid and ungraspable.
- 見聞風所飄鼓 ("Blown about and beaten by the wind of seeing-hearing,"《古尊宿語錄》). Here the metaphor is wind. The person is not the moon; the person is something being tossed by the wind of perception-and-grasping. This is the lived experience of being yanked around by every notification, every glance, every comment.
- 一聚根塵安得休 ("A cluster of sense organs and objects — how can it rest?,"《古尊宿語錄》). 根塵 (*gēnchén*, sense organs and their objects) form a sticky mass. Until seeing-hearing is seen through, this cluster has no way to settle.
- 見聞蕭灑孰相粘 ("Seeing-hearing free and easy — what does it stick to?,"《宏智禪師廣錄》). The counter-image: when the wind drops, there is no stickiness. The same seeing and hearing, only without the grasping.
Each metaphor points to a different aspect. Water-moon points to vivid-yet-ungraspable. Wind points to being-blown-about. Cluster points to accumulated entanglement. Free-and-easy points to the released condition. None is the whole picture; together they are.
Extending the Field: Language, Image, and Function
Because the materials repeatedly tie 見聞 to 影像 (*yǐngxiàng*, images/appearances) and to 言詮 (*yánquán*, verbal explication), the concept is wider than a Western "senses/perception" reading. The《景德傳燈錄》speaks of 見聞離影像 ("seeing-hearing apart from images"), and《宏智禪師廣錄》insists that the activity is inseparable from 語言流轉 ("the flow of language"). In other words: in a contemporary human life, "seeing" and "hearing" almost always arrive already packaged in words and images. To speak of 見聞 today must include this packaging.
Finally, the concept is held together by its pairing with 體用 (*tǐyòng*, essence and function). The verse 體用無妨分不分 ("essence and function do not obstruct division-or-not") shows that once the disease is seen through, the apparent split between the "essence" of seeing-hearing and the "function" of forms-and-sounds is recognized as never having been a real split. This is the structural claim that holds the whole doctrine in place: the depth and the surface are not two things.
二、生活裡的走查
Let me walk this carefully through three scenes from an ordinary contemporary day. I will map each classical element as we go, and flag where modern people typically map it wrong.
Scene 1: 11:47 PM, scrolling in bed
The phone is in your hand. The screen glows. Instagram, TikTok, the news app, then a text from someone you used to know, then back to Instagram.
聲色 (sounds and forms): the images and audio on the screen. A stranger on a beach. A news clip with sirens. A friend's vacation. A reel of someone cooking. These are the *objects* that appear.
**影像 (*yǐngxiàng*)**: the curated, filtered, edited images. They have a specific quality — heightened, selected, often unreal. The Chan record's word 影像 is exact here: what is presented is an *image*, not a thing. (Most people would map 影像 to "imagination" — wrong. 影像 here means the *appearing* itself, what is presented to the eye. The screen is pure 影像.)
見聞: the activity of scrolling-seeing-hearing. But notice: this is not passive reception. The thumb is moving, the mind is comparing ("their life / my life"), evaluating ("do I like this?"), storing ("I'll remember that for a conversation"), wanting ("I want that"). The Chan masters would say: this is seeing-and-hearing in its disease form.
見聞風所飄鼓 ("blown about by the wind of seeing-hearing"): the experience of being pulled from one tab to the next, the agitation of not-quite-satisfied-but-can't-stop. The metaphor of *wind* is precise — the person is not in control, the person is being moved.
見聞不脫，如水中月 ("not free of seeing-hearing is like the moon in water"): every image is vivid; you can almost touch the screen, almost step into the picture. But it is the moon in water. The follower count, the likes, the perfectly lit meal — ungraspable, and your trying to grasp it is the source of the agitation.
病在見聞 ("the disease is in seeing-hearing"): here is the mapping most people get wrong. The default modern interpretation is: *the disease is in the phone, the screen, the algorithm, the platform.* That is, *the disease is in 聲色.* The Chan move is to relocate it: the phone can be put down, the screen can be turned off, and the disease is still running. The mind is "seeing" its own replays, "hearing" its own commentary, comparing and storing with no external stimulus. The disease is in the *activity*, not the object.
即此見聞非見聞 ("this very seeing-hearing is not seeing-hearing"): what would this look like in this scene? Not stopping scrolling (that's the two-vehicle exit — 無見無聞). Not judging yourself for scrolling. But in the very scrolling, there can be a moment when you are *seeing without grasping*. The image is bright; you are not reaching for it. The notification sound rings; you are not jerked by it. The same screen, the same eyes, the same ears — only the *project of grasping* has quietly stopped. The verse 居見聞之境而見聞不到 ("dwelling in the realm of seeing-hearing yet seeing-hearing does not reach") describes exactly this.
Where modern people commonly mis-map: they think the Chan cure here is to *use the phone less* or to *quit social media* or to *practice digital minimalism*. The Chan record explicitly rejects this as the *two-vehicle exit*. The phone, the screen, the algorithm — these are 聲色, and the disease is not in them. The disease is in the grasping activity that the phone happens to feed. You can have the same disease with no phone at all.
Scene 2: The argument that won't end
A partner, a colleague, a family member said something. You saw their face. You heard their words. You have been replaying both for two days.
聲色: the words, the tone, the facial expression. The actual external event. (This much is straightforward.)
見聞: but the seeing and hearing you are doing now is not the original seeing and hearing. It is the *replay*. The mind is "seeing" the face again, "hearing" the words again, and re-grasping them each time. The《宏智禪師廣錄》's phrase 言語流轉於見聞中 ("language flowing in seeing-hearing") fits exactly: the original sounds and forms are gone, but the *linguistic-cognitive* seeing-hearing is still active and still binding.
循言執滯，病在見聞 ("clinging to words and getting stuck, the disease is in seeing-hearing"): you are stuck on the words. The exact phrasing. The exact tone. You are replaying them with a particular interpretation, and the interpretation has become the experience. (A common mis-mapping here is to believe the disease is in the *other person*'s words. The Chan move is to relocate: the words are just sounds; the disease is in the activity of replaying-and-clinging.)
見聞皆共有，取捨總非空 ("Seeing-hearing is shared by all; taking and rejecting are both not empty,"《古尊宿語錄》): both parties saw and heard the same event. But each is doing something different with it: taking some parts, rejecting others, building a narrative. This *taking-and-rejecting* (取捨) is what the verse is pointing at. It is not empty, because it produces very real consequences — resentment, distance, a whole story about who they are.
互換相通 ("interchange and interpenetration,"《宏智禪師廣錄》): what would the *released* version of this scene look like? Not "I should be more understanding" (a moral program). Rather: the same words are heard, but now hearing and seeing interpenetrate. You hear the words, and you *see* (sense) what is underneath them. You see the face, and you *hear* what is unsaid. The strict separation of "what I saw" and "what I heard" has loosened, and the event is no longer graspable as a thing to be held against the other.
Where modern people commonly mis-map: they think the cure here is "empathy" or "perspective-taking" — mental techniques to see the other side. The Chan record is not recommending a technique. 互換相通 is not a skill; it is a description of what happens when the disease in seeing-hearing is no longer running. You are not adding empathy to your seeing-and-hearing; the same seeing-and-hearing is *not grasping* at its own narrative.
Scene 3: The morning commute, traffic, noise, light
You are on a bus or train. The city is loud. Cars honk. Someone's phone is playing a video without headphones. The light keeps changing.
聲色: the sounds, the visual chaos. A field of objects appearing simultaneously.
見聞風所飄鼓: the mind is being blown. Horn, brake, light, phone, face, sign, ad, news ticker. There is no rest.
一聚根塵安得休 ("a cluster of sense organs and objects — how can it rest?"): the eyes are receiving light, the ears are receiving sound, the mind is receiving the whole bundle. This is the *cluster* (聚) the verse names. Without a shift in how seeing-hearing is operating, the cluster does not settle.
見聞蕭灑孰相粘 ("Seeing-hearing free and easy — what does it stick to?,"《宏智禪師廣錄》): the counter-image. What would it feel like for the same horn, the same brake-light, the same video-without-headphones to be present, and yet for there to be *no stickiness*? The horns do not stick. The light does not stick. The mind is not making each thing into a thing-it-must-react-to.
Where modern people commonly mis-map: they think this requires the absence of stimuli — noise-cancelling headphones, a quiet meditation retreat, sensory deprivation. The record explicitly rejects this: 不是長連牀上閉目合眼喚作無見 ("It is not lying on a long bench with eyes closed and calling that 'no seeing'"). The free-and-easy seeing-hearing is in the middle of the city, with the horns still sounding. The same 見聞, only not sticking.
三、當代人為什麼需要它
We live inside an apparatus engineered to make 見聞 *sick*. This is not an exaggeration; it is a structural fact.
The screen, the algorithm, the feed — these are not neutral surfaces. They are designed to exploit the same activity the Chan masters are pointing at: the mind's automatic project of reaching for what appears, comparing, storing, wanting more. Every notification is a small wind gust. Every scroll is a small act of grasping. Every "for you" feed is a precision instrument aimed at the root-and-object cluster (根塵之聚). The contemporary human being is, in the precise language of《古尊宿語錄》, *晝夜被見聞風所飄鼓* — blown about day and night by the wind of seeing-hearing.
There are three reasons this concept is particularly needed now:
First, vocabulary. Modern languages do not have a clean word for the distinction between *raw perception* and *perception-already-grasping*. We have "perception," "senses," "attention," "mindfulness" — all useful, none precise enough. 見聞 names exactly the cognitive event the Chan record is concerned with: perception that is already structured by subject-object, already running the program of taking-and-rejecting (取捨). Without such a term, people either moralize ("be more present!") or pathologize ("I have ADHD"), and both miss the actual mechanism.
Second, the trap of the two vehicles is now widespread. The modern culture offers two exits from a saturated 見聞 environment, and both are the wrong ones the Chan record explicitly names:
- *More* seeing-hearing — travel, experiences, content, "living my best life." This is 一向認取見聞為究竟, taking seeing-hearing as ultimate. The world becomes a stream of things to be had. - *Less* seeing-hearing — digital detox, sensory deprivation, monk-mode retreats, "I quit social media." This is 無見無聞是二乘, the two-vehicle exit. The disease is not in the screen; closing your eyes does not cure the mind's grasping.
The Chan record insists both miss. The cure is *in* the same seeing-and-hearing, only the grasping in it has been seen through. 即此見聞非見聞 is not a third option between the two extremes; it is a different *dimension* of the same act.
Third, image and language are no longer separable from sense-perception. The《宏智禪師廣錄》's extension of 見聞 to include 言語流轉 ("the flow of language") is, in a way, prophetic. Contemporary perception is almost never raw. We see a meal and *hear* the caption; we see a face and *read* the comment thread; we hear a news event and immediately receive the framing. The activity of seeing-hearing is, for us, almost entirely mediated by 影像 (images) and 言詮 (verbal explicators). The Chan diagnosis applies more directly now than it did at the time it was written.
A contemporary neuroscience analogy (with the necessary caveat): the brain's predictive-processing account suggests that what we "perceive" is heavily constructed by prior models, not a passive recording of stimuli. This *resonates* with the Chan claim that 見聞 is not raw data but perception-already-grasping — but the analogy is partial. Neuroscience describes the mechanism; Chan is pointing at the *activity of grasping* within the mechanism, and at the possibility of its non-operation. The two are not equivalent, and the predictive-processing account has its own unresolved questions about consciousness, qualia, and first-person experience. It would be a category error to say "neuroscience proves 見聞"; the analogy is useful for orientation, not for validation.
What the concept offers, that contemporary culture does not, is a way to talk about the *quality* of seeing-hearing without collapsing into either (a) more stimulation or (b) less stimulation. It points at something that has to be noticed within the act itself, not added to or subtracted from it. The verse 居見聞之境而見聞不到 ("dwelling in the realm of seeing-hearing yet seeing-hearing does not reach") names exactly this third possibility: being in the middle of perception, with nothing in the perception rejected and nothing in it grasped.
四、常見誤讀與澄清
Misreading 1: "見聞 just means the senses, sensory input."
This collapses the classical structure. 見聞 in Chan is not the bare neurological event; it is the cognitive event already structured by subject-object, already running the grasping program. The eye seeing light is only the *raw material*; 見聞 is the *seeing-as-grasping*. The verses 病在見聞 ("the disease is in seeing-hearing") and 言語流轉於見聞中 ("language flowing in seeing-hearing") make clear that 見聞 includes the whole cognitive-perceptual stream, not just the optic and auditory nerve signals.
Misreading 2: "病在見聞 means the senses are bad, so we should reject them."
This is the most common misreading, and it is the one the record explicitly forbids. 有見有聞是凡夫，無見無聞是二乘. The two vehicles (二乘) try to cure the disease by cutting off the sense organs. The Chan verdict is that this is *not* the ultimate. The cure is not the absence of seeing-hearing but the same seeing-hearing no longer binding: 不離見聞，識取無見聞底 ("Not departing from seeing-hearing, recognize that which is without seeing-hearing"). If you "cure" the disease by going into sensory deprivation, you have not cured it; you have just removed the obvious manifestation. The mind will continue to "see" its own images and "hear" its own commentary and grasp at those.
Misreading 3: "即此見聞非見聞 means there is no seeing, no hearing."
No. The verse says *即此* — "this very." It is not negating the seeing and hearing; it is negating the solid-object status of what is seen and heard. The form is still seen. The sound is still heard. The eye still operates. The ear still operates. What is no longer operative is the *project of making what appears into a thing that can be held, possessed, judged, or rejected*. The line 眼不可見，耳不可聞，非見非聞，宛爾見聞 ("The eye cannot be seen, the ear cannot be heard; neither seeing nor hearing, yet seemingly seeing-hearing") is precise: the *eye-itself* (not the visible object) cannot be seen; the *ear-itself* cannot be heard. This is about the *depth* of the act, not the *elimination* of the act.
Misreading 4: "見聞 = visual cortex / auditory cortex; science has now explained it."
This is a category error. Neuroscience can describe the *mechanism* (light hits retina, signal goes to V1, etc.), and the predictive-processing account can describe the *constructive* nature of perception. These *resonate* with the Chan diagnosis, but they do not *explain* it. The Chan record is pointing at the *first-person* activity of grasping and at the *first-person* possibility of its non-operation. Neuroscience, in its current form, is silent on the question of whether the first-person grasping can stop — and on the question of what is left when it does. The analogy is useful; the equivalence is not. (It is also worth noting that neuroscience itself does not have a settled account of consciousness, qualia, or the hard problem. To claim it has "proven" any Buddhist claim would be to overstate what the science can deliver.)
Misreading 5: "見聞 is about external things, so the cure is to change the external environment."
A popular version of this: "If I just moved to the countryside / quit social media / found a quieter job, my 見聞 problem would be solved." But 聲色不到處，病在見聞 — "where sounds and forms do not reach, the disease is still in the seeing-hearing." The records are explicit: the disease is *not* in the 聲色. Move to the countryside; the mind still "sees" its own images, still "hears" its own commentary. Change the job; the same taking-and-rejecting (取捨) operates on the new objects. The record's warning 見聞皆共有，取捨總非空 ("Seeing-hearing is shared by all; taking-and-rejecting is not empty in either case") is precisely about this: ordinary people and sages share the *same* seeing-hearing. The difference is not in the objects but in the grasping.
Misreading 6: "影像 means imagination."
In modern Chinese, 影像 can mean "image" (a photograph) or "afterimage" (a visual remnant). In the Chan record, 影像 is the *appearing* — what is presented to perception. It is not the faculty of imagination; it is what the imagination (or the screen) presents. The verse 見聞離影像 ("seeing-hearing apart from images") is not saying "perception without imagination"; it is saying that seeing-and-hearing, when not binding, no longer operates by making what appears into a fixed, image-shaped object. This is closer to "perception no longer freezes into representations" than to "imagination-free perception."
Misreading 7: "居見聞之境而見聞不到 is a state of detached observation."
This reading flattens the verse into a psychological posture: be calm, be detached, observe without reacting. But the verse is not recommending a *state*. It is describing a *dimension* of the same act. You are not "in a state of being unmoved"; you are in the *middle* of seeing and hearing, and the seeing-hearing no longer reaches (grabbing, naming, solidifying) what is there. The metaphor of 宛爾見聞 ("seemingly seeing-hearing") suggests this is not a frozen state but an *alive* seeing-hearing that has not congealed into a project. The《宏智禪師廣錄》's image of 清風明月隨舟來 ("clear wind and bright moon follow the boat") is the antidote to the "detached observer" misreading: the released seeing-hearing is not detachment; it is *responsive without grasping*.
Misreading 8: "This is just mindfulness."
The contemporary "mindfulness" tradition has its own vocabulary and its own claims. The Chan concept of 見聞 is not the same. Mindfulness (sati, 正念) is a specific faculty of attention. 見聞 is the *whole cognitive event* including attention, grasping, naming, and the possibility of their non-operation. Mindfulness practices often strengthen attention *within* the grasping program; the Chan record points at the *non-operation* of the grasping program. They are not the same, and a person can have excellent mindfulness and still be 循言執滯 ("clinging to words and stuck") in the way the Chan record describes. The conflation of the two is one of the most widespread misreadings of Chan in the contemporary world.
Closing note on the structural shape
The three records together (《古尊宿語錄》emphasizing the verse-formulation and the diagnosis of 病,《景德傳燈錄》emphasizing the kōan-like deconstruction in dialogue,《宏智禪師廣錄》emphasizing the *released* and *interpenetrating* function) form a single arc. The arc is not: 見聞 is bad → reject it → be empty. The arc is: 見聞 is the entry point of all knowing → it is the place where the disease lives → it is *also* the place where awakening is recognized → once seen through, the same seeing-hearing is the place of 見聞佛事 ("seeing-hearing as buddha-work"), 互換相通 ("interchange and interpenetration"), 蕭灑無粘 ("free and easy, unstuck"). The surface and the depth were never two things. The same screen, the same eyes, the same ears, the same words — only the grasping has quietly stopped.
剎剎塵塵齊說法，見聞互換自相通。 *In every particle and every dust-mote, all preach the dharma; seeing and hearing interchange and interpenetrate of themselves.* (《宏智禪師廣錄》)
The same seeing and hearing. The same forms and sounds. The interchange is not somewhere else. It is *this*.