by Tang Huyen

Buddhism is the canning and selling of such a total surprise. A surprise can't be canned and sold, surely not as such. That is the contradiction and inanity of Buddhism, not accidental but essential.

Other than that mysterious ending of the cankers/outflows/inflows, awakening has no specific content, like beatific vision or whatever. Nothing tells the awakened person anything (like choruses of angels telling the saved that they are saved, forever), and he learns nothing, other than that he experiences peace, especially peace with himself. The content of the Buddha's teaching, like Dependent Arisal, the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, etc. was invented later. In the moment of awakening he only experienced peace, especially peace with himself, after six years of strenuous, relentless, unforgiving beating up on himself, both mentally and physically. During those six years he "got it wrong" by wrecking his body (that part was the official Jaina practice), but unknowingly "got it right" on the side, as accidental by-product, by pulling his mind together and doing the "dust-wiping" work of Buddhism (that was extra-curricular, from the Jaina point of view). When he realised that such severe penance had been a big error, that was his first awakening (though the Buddhist tradition did not consider it as such), and after that he merely completed his awakening by relaxing all the way and stilling his compositions all the way. The compositions (saṅkhāra, saṃskāra) are based on the stem kr- "to act, to do", as in karman "act, deed", and he defined Nirvāṇa as an-abhi-saṃskāra "not doing, non-acting", which is the exact equivalent to the Chinese wu-wei of Daoism "non-doing". In that moment of awakening, all he did was to calm the doing/acting all the way and to stop it completely, and as a result he experienced peace, especially peace with himself. There was no striving or determination in that. Quite the contrary. Just relaxation and being serene. Opening up all the way (he had been closing himself down all the way). Releasing himself all the way (he had been imposing himself on himself all the way). Letting himself go all the way (he had been blocking himself all the way). That was the whole extent of his awakening. And it was completely accidental. He had not anticipated any such happening. Nothing and nobody had told him about any such possibility. It was total surprise.

Buddhism is the canning and selling of such a total surprise. Which is somewhat clumsy, awkward and counter-intuitive, because a surprise can't be canned and sold, surely not as such, namely as a surprise. It is supposed to occur afresh, anew, without precedent. That is the contradiction and inanity of Buddhism, not accidental but essential. If you logically analyse it, it falls apart, because it packages a contradiction and inanity for posterity. The very contradiction and inanity explode when you think about the idea, of doing the non-doing, of acting the non-acting. It is a flat contradiction, right there. But if you act out the contradiction, you can actually get to the non-doing, the non-acting. It is total nonsense, from the logical point of view, but in practice it can be resolved, and Buddhism consists in that resolution. That is the whole story. All else is parerga et paraphernalia.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on April 8, 2008. Author: Tang Huyen. 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 continues the "Switch" thread (April 7, 2008) with a tight philosophical encapsulation: awakening has no positive content — only peace with oneself. The doctrinal architecture of Buddhism (Dependent Arisal, Noble Eightfold Path) was constructed after the fact; the experience itself was purely negative. TH's identification of Nirvāṇa as an-abhi-saṃskāra = wu-wei is a cross-traditional etymological argument he returns to repeatedly. The closing observation — that Buddhism is a logical flat contradiction that can only be resolved by acting it out — is one of his sharpest formulations of the paradox at the centre of the entire tradition.

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

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