by Tang Huyen

He experiences experience as a whole, but does not mentate it as a whole. Even less does he mentate a self as a convergence centre to organise that experience around.

It is true that the Buddhist saint is freed from
the five aggregates, and the aggregates are just
a way of referring to experience, so it means
that the Buddhist saint is freed from experience,
but this freedom is purely mental and not
physical.

The Buddhist saint lets go of form, lets go of
sensation, lets go of notion, lets go of the
compositions, lets go of consciousness, and
as a result of this letting go he no longer cuts
up experience by means of concepts and
categories, structures and frameworks,
including the five aggregates. He experiences
experience as a whole, but does not mentate
it as a whole. Even less does he mentate a
self as a convergence centre to organise that
experience around.

Yet all that he experiences is still perfectly
conditioned, just like before, it is still
perfectly subject to causes and conditions,
just like before, only he doesn't mentate any
of it as conditioned or unconditioned, cause
or effect, but leaves it (the flowing whole of
experience) alone and untouched, that is,
untouched by mentation. That is how he is
freed of experience.

He does not impose boundaries and limits
on his experience, and any concept or idea
or notion is already imposing boundaries
and limits. If he identifies with anything — say,
a self, big or small, individual or collective,
with attributes or without attributes — that is
already imposing boundaries and limits.

Buddhist cultivation helps him merely to stop
such imposition of boundaries and limits. It
does not involve the development of new
boundaries and limits, however big and
unlimited. It does not lull him into any
metaphysical dream of living in any
unconditioned anything, even less in an
unconditioned world. Such a dream is
already desire, hankering.

What happens is that he is reconciled with
himself and his world, that he is at peace
with them (and therefore does not attempt
to escape to some other self or world), and
he is so reconciled with them and at peace
with them that he can afford to let go of
them and just live, without developing any
notion of self and world.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on December 7, 2004, in reply to Robert Epstein's account of liberation as an impersonal field of consciousness that "operates through the processes of a human being's body and mind." Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

Tang Huyen's core correction: liberation is not a matter of consciousness discovering that "there is no Robert" and then running on impersonally as before. It is a matter of stopping the imposition of conceptual structure — the cutting up of experience by means of concepts, categories, and frameworks, including the five aggregates themselves. The freed person still experiences everything subject to causes and conditions; he simply does not mentate any of it as such. The result is not a metaphysical upgrade (living in an unconditioned world) but a psychological one: reconciliation with himself and his world so thorough that he can let go of them entirely and just live.

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

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