by Tang Huyen

"Liberation comes at that price. Nobody else can force us to walk our talk, and nobody else can walk our talk for us in our stead."

Krishnamurti famously defines freedom as freedom from the known, and talks of fear of the unknown. Liberation comes from facing the known and opening up to the unknown. The process works only if one engages in it wholeheartedly, singlemindedly. But if one is half-hearted or lukewarm, it will just sit there, and that may last the rest of one's life.

Both Buddhist training and its result aim at pulling oneself together to act as one single unit, in total action. One can gradually increase the degree of facing the known and opening up to the unknown as one gathers oneself together into one single unit, to act in unison — and not as separate parts that ignore each other or fight each other. But if one refuses to do so and chooses instead to keep oneself in pieces, which ignore each other or fight each other, one will keep oneself to the known, be it wretched, and that may last the rest of one's life.

Such a prospect — either way — works behind the scenes, regardless of specifics and externalities. One can follow the effortful method of cracking the public cases or the effortless method of silent contemplation; one can do visualisations (the Four Divine Abodes are visualisations) or insight-penetration (vipassanā); one can recite the Buddha's name or dedicate one's merits — the same process underlies them all.

It is ironic that some people know all there is to know of such a process of liberation (or alternatively of bondage), for half a century or more, but do not put themselves into it. They prefer to spin verbiage and put up a sham, without actually doing the work, because the work requires — facing the known and opening up to the unknown, all of which is capable of generating fear. Fear creates dissension and fragmentation, as Krishnamurti says often. So one is stuck and prefers to remain stuck, even for a long time — the rest of one's life, which can easily come to half a century or more — regardless of one's verbiage and sham. We can invest in liberation or in bondage, and it is all up to us. Nobody else can force us to walk our talk, and nobody else can walk our talk for us in our stead. Liberation comes at that price.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on 29 August 2008, in the "Going down / Flipping out" thread. Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

The Krishnamurti reference is to Freedom from the Known (1969), one of his most widely read works; TH's reading fuses it with the Buddhist vocabulary of total action (anabhisaṃskāra) and the unity of method. The observation that all techniques — koan, silent contemplation, Pure Land recitation, visualisation — share a single underlying movement (pulling together to act in unison) is one of TH's most sweeping, and most consistent, claims. The "sham" language is directed at the newsgroup participant who had been engaged in religious conversation for decades without apparently applying any of it; TH's critique is structural, not personal. Read alongside "Where It Is At" (July 2008) and "The Vast Sky" (August 2008).

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

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