by Tang Huyen

"When the problem has been seen through, not only has it been resolved, but it is seen as never having been a problem."

It is an issue of how to begin the process. If the problem is incredibly pressing, it drives you nuts all the time — think of the people addicted to cocaine — and you may or may not afford even to begin looking at it at all, even less figure out a way to resolve it. The people addicted to cocaine think only of the next hit, and to them their addiction is not a problem. Actually they cannot detach themselves from it to even think about it as anything; they only crave the next hit. Once some comfort zone has been created — by will or by chance or whatever else — there is a virtuous circle, in that it increases the chance of resolving the problem, and as the problem gets gradually resolved, the comfort zone grows, recursively. When the problem has been seen through, not only has it been resolved, but it is seen as never having been a problem.

That was what happened to the Buddha that night, when he no longer believed in suffering, disinvested in suffering, and ended his suffering. Not only had he ended his suffering, but it was seen as having never been a problem.

It happens that some people do not take their beliefs seriously. They have beliefs, but their beliefs are fluffy to them. They can arrive at such a blasé state by mental culture, or they are just that way naturally.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on 16 October 2008, in the "Canned unwisdom" thread. Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

The "comfort zone" teaching describes the recursive, self-reinforcing logic of spiritual progress: a small opening creates more clarity, which creates a larger opening. This is not linear effort but positive feedback — and its culmination is not just the resolution of the problem but its retrospective erasure. TH anchors this in the Buddha's awakening: he did not merely end suffering but came to see that the suffering had never constituted a real problem. The coda on "fluffy beliefs" — people whose relationship to their own convictions is light enough that the convictions do not trap them — points toward the ideal disposition: beliefs held lightly, available to be seen through when the time comes.

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

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