by Tang Huyen

The entire point to mental culture is to decrease resistance and increase flowing, letting pass, letting go. Resistance equals self, and absence of resistance equals absence of self. And self equals suffering.

The more one advances on mental culture, the less one has to defend oneself, and this is true of Daoism, Stoicism and Buddhism. One defends and protects oneself less and less, especially with regard to oneself, within oneself with oneself. One becomes more open and more honest, including open and honest to remarks and suggestions from others about oneself, though one is so open and honest to oneself in the first place that if somebody else notices something about one, positive or negative, and tells one about it, one already knows it from one's own side.

As one thins out one's self, one automatically thins out one's defence, for one has little to defend or protect, for or against, especially regarding oneself.

Ultimately, when one is fully awakened, one has dropped all self and what belongs to self, and has nothing to defend and protect, especially from oneself. One is then fully open and honest, especially regarding oneself, and all defence is gone. One is fully transparent to oneself, though paradoxically one can become thoroughly opaque to others.

As to letting submerged parts of our personality out to play, to the best of my knowledge we all do it (unless we have gotten rid of our unconscious, in which case we're fully awakened), and the more aware we are of such a phenomenon, the better off we are. Ultimately we are fully aware of our unconscious and drop it completely when we awaken.

At the other extreme, when we are fully unaware of letting submerged parts of our personality out to play, then we are indeed very deluded. The submerged parts of our personality will come out to play on their own accord, in an unmodulated manner.

The more opaque a person is to himself or herself, the more transparent he or she is to others, or at least to the discerning, and the more transparent a person is to himself or herself, the more opaque he or she is to others, including the discerning.

The more somebody tries to hide something to himself or herself, the more easily it will slip out to others, right off the bat. No interpretation is even needed, because it is so patent. Defensiveness is an obvious give-away, because somebody who understands the absence of self has no self to defend or protect, for or against, internally or externally.

On the contrary, when one has nothing to hide, then indeed nothing will slip through inadvertently, and one needs spend no energy hiding anything. One can just open up and float away. No mooring is possible. If others throw criticisms at one, one can consider them objectively and in detachment, and accept those that fit, and in either case — whether they fit or not — one can thank their authors for their feedback, because it is free.

Buddhism seeks to calm the mind and to avoid anything that is worked up by mind, at great effort, and are artificial through and through, anything that is "held in place by painful efforts," as opposed to true Buddhist meditation, which is not held in place by painful efforts, na saṅkhāra-niggayhā-vārita-vato, as at AN, IV, 428 (9, 37, 7), SA, 1246, 341c, AN, I, 254–255 (3, 100), III, 24 (5, 27), SN, I, 28 (1, 4, 8, 11), Yogācāra-bhūmi, T, 30, 1579, 344a10.

The crucial issue is here resistance versus flowing, letting pass, letting go.

The entire point to mental culture is to decrease resistance and increase flowing, letting pass, letting go. Resistance equals self, and absence of resistance (presence of flowing, letting pass, letting go) equals absence of self. And self equals suffering.

It is this basic, fundamental point that is not understood by many cultivators, including those who devote years and decades, even an entire lifetime, to mental culture. They haven't got the concept of mental culture aright.

With a wrong starting plan (Ansatz), whatever mental culture they do will be wrong, regardless of externalities.

Regarding one's dark side, shadow side, swamp stuff, or whatever, one has to accept it oneself first, and if one accepts it oneself, it makes no difference whether others accept it or not. If one accepts oneself and is come to peace with oneself, including one's dark side, what need has one for the world, one way or the other?

It all goes together: if one blocks oneself from oneself, one will engage in a whole train of behaviour that keeps itself going just the same way, and once one drops that way and engages instead in self-openness and self-honesty, then one will engage in a whole train of behaviour that keeps itself going just the same way. The former is the vicious circle, the latter the virtuous circle.

If one engages in mental culture, and especially Buddhist mental culture, one probably aims for peace and serenity, doesn't one? But why should one engage in mental culture if one doesn't want truth — truth about oneself? If one automatically rejects oneself across the board, in a blanket rejection, so that one habitually denies something and then goes ahead and does it, why on earth does one want mental culture? Such wholesale rejection of oneself bespeaks of friction, strain, conflict, and surely not of peace, harmony and serenity.

Such habit betrays a concerted repression that is "held in place by painful efforts," and is the exact contrary to Buddhist cultivation, which seeks to relax, let emerge, let go, let flow. It shows up as the constant blowups — which are safety valves, to let off steam that one has pent up inside.

In extreme cases, such life-long self-repression, self-denial, self-dissociation and self-alienation can suddenly collapse when the lie of one's life is revealed to one, perhaps by some encounters that broach directly such self-repression, self-denial, self-dissociation and self-alienation, all held in place by painful efforts. Boom and it all crashes.

Mental culture in general and Buddhist mental culture in particular help one recognise oneself, reconnect with oneself, reconcile with oneself, so that one can accede to consciousness of oneself, and ultimately (in Buddhism) let go of one's self and be free — be free of oneself, one's self.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on January 17, 2004. Author: Tang Huyen (Laughing Buddha, Inc.). Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

Tang Huyen was a scholar of Buddhist studies with deep command of Pāli, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan sources. Posting to talk.religion.buddhism and related groups from 2003 to 2008, he was among the most rigorous analytical voices in the English-language Buddhist Usenet world. This post is his clearest statement of a central theme in his body of work: the direction of Buddhist cultivation is entirely toward decreasing resistance and increasing flowing — and any practice that is "held in place by painful efforts" is moving in the wrong direction entirely.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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