by Tang Huyen

"One simply opens up, that's all. That is the door to grace. Grace comes free, to those who don't do anything, especially anything to deserve it."

In dealing with the inner, subjective world, we face something that quite differs from the outer, objective world. The latter allows precise, minute handling, which can be taught as technique (including logic, math, science, engineering, etc.), whereas the former tends to be amorphous and slippery. The reliability of the latter contrasts with the fuzzy-wuzzy nature of the former. The latter lends itself to artifice and imposition (which is how the theistic religions imagine their God creating the world, the way an architect builds a house), whereas the former (as the Buddha discovered) resists artifice and imposition. The Buddha and the Old One (Laozi) agree that in the realm of the inner, subjective world, it is best not to interfere and not to intervene, but rather to leave it to handle itself. Less is more.

And it is not just the way to handle it that differs from the outer, objective world, but also the results differ, in that when one does nothing — does not interfere, does not intervene, but lets the situation act one — the outcome feels great, but is still purely subjective, strictly sentimental, with nothing in the outside world to pin it down to. For a moment the external world seems to light up, and everything seems to come to life, to ooze out with perfection from all over, but when the moment passes, the world comes back to normal. Was the phenomenon a mere illusion? Did it only appear to appear? Whatever. The important thing is that when one does nothing — does not interfere, does not intervene, but lets the situation act one — the outcome feels great, and it extends its beneficial influence to the rest of one's life, to one's life outside of such moments.

Which is why the physicalists are completely wrong when they try to squeeze Buddhism into physicalism. That is about as an ill-fitting box to force Buddhism into as any other box out there. The trick is not to force anything into anything, even less into a box (a Procrustean bed) like matter, but to let everything be what it wants to be. One has to allow what happens to happen, and in so doing, one gives up all identification, especially as to what is possible and not possible. To rule anything out ahead of time (the way physicalists rule out anything not having to do with matter) would be foolish, because one has no way of knowing whether one's framework has eliminated a priori some things that can indeed happen. In mental culture one would be wise to open up to everything that may occur or not occur, without stipulating ahead of time what it is that one will be open to or not open to, and that choicelessness may well be the quickest and easiest path to transcendence. What it is that one opens up to, one doesn't know, but that is where the excitement lies. One simply opens up, that's all. That is the door to grace. Grace comes free, to those who don't do anything, especially anything to deserve it.

God is frivolous and gratuitous, even wanton.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on 20 September 2008, in the "just a little" thread. Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

The distinction between inner and outer as two fundamentally different domains requiring fundamentally different handling is one of TH's most consistent philosophical contributions. The outer world (objective, physical, social) allows technical intervention: logic, engineering, law. The inner world (subjective, sentimental, mental) obeys a different logic — one of non-interference. This is not mysticism but epistemology: the inner domain's "fuzzy-wuzzy" nature is not a defect to be overcome by better technique but a structural feature that makes technique counterproductive. The Laozi connection (wu wei — non-action, non-interference) is explicit; the conclusion about grace — that it comes to those who do not do anything, especially anything to deserve it — is the most compressed expression of TH's soteriology. The final one-liner ("God is frivolous and gratuitous, even wanton") is characteristic.

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

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