by Tang Huyen

"Language and thought work by chunking and bagging, and the only way to communicate about such a state is to use language and thought to break themselves and point to what is outside of them. It is to use falsity to teach truth."

There are multiple considerations that can apply here.

Firstly, the awakened state is outside of thought and language,
and to talk about it requires thought and language, which
irremediably prostitutes it beyond recognition. And it is shorn
of attachment, therefore those who are qualified to talk about it,
namely the awakeneds (among whom I do not count myself), if
they opt to talk about it (which they may well opt not to), talk
about it in such a way as to point to the absence of attachment,
and one way of doing so is to negate what they say immediately
after saying it, especially seeing that what they say misses the
target anyway, not in degree but in kind. And therefore what they
say is self-contradictory, and everybody knows that in a
self-contradictory system anything can be said. That part is the
core of the mindfuck in Buddhism and Daoism, by which anything
can be said and called true Buddhism and Daoism, which is
something that Japanese Zen masters who were nationalist jingoists
in WW II knew well and exploited all the way to justify and validate
mass murder and other kinds of unspeakable war crimes.

Secondly, the awakened state is purely subjective, strictly
sentimental, and there is nothing to pin it down to. If there was
something that it can be tied down to, it would be bondage and not
freedom. But to charge right in and talk about such a purely
subjective, strictly sentimental state can be quite disorienting.
People communicate by what is common, and such a state is outside
of thought and language, therefore is not common to them and is
very hard to communicate about unless one resorts to lots of
roundabouts, like metaphors, metonyms, and various contradictions
and inanities that are aimed at defeating themselves (they are not
aimed at some truth or reality existing from its own side but only
at breaking the hold of language and thought). Language and thought
work by chunking and bagging, and the only way to communicate
about such a state is to use language and thought to break
themselves and point to what is outside of them. It is to use
falsity to teach truth.

Thirdly, given that people understand by what is common to them,
such a purely subjective, strictly sentimental state can be
broached obliquely, by way of what is not it, namely the objective
world, and the objective world as chunked and bagged by language
and thought, as it is what people find common to them. Therefore
the awakeneds fall back on the conventional world as interpreted by
conventional boxes, namely language and thought, to point to what
is outside of them and free of them. Thus instead of saying that
attachment should be dropped (which is a purely subjective, strictly
sentimental approach), they have to modulate their message by way
of the world and say that things are impermanent and should not be
attached to, because attaching to them leads to suffering. Strictly
speaking, it is impossible to know for sure that in the whole universe
all things are impermanent. But such a tactic is resorted to to help
people release attachment and end their suffering. Instead of saying
that to build up a self leads to suffering (which is a purely
subjective, strictly sentimental approach), the awakeneds have to say
that things lack self, essence and substance, and attaching to them
leads to suffering. Strictly speaking, it is impossible to know for sure
that in the whole universe all things lack self, essence and substance.
But such a tactic is resorted to to help people release attachment and
end their suffering.

It can be argued that in some parts of the universe there could be
things that are permanent and have self, essence and substance, but
that for us to attach to them would still lead to suffering. Again such
an approach would be purely subjective, strictly sentimental and
would be hard to understand to people who only think by way of the
objective world.

The detour by way of the world still comes with automatic negation of
what has just been said (that part is not bypassable in the teaching
of the awakeneds), and this automatic negation lends itself to the
negation of self, essence and substance, in things and not just in us.

Returning to the contradiction that the lack of self, essence and
substance leads to, this weakness has been exploited by the opponents
of Buddhism, especially the opponents of the Middlist school
(Madhyamaka), reputedly founded by Nāgārjuna. This school teaches
the absence of essence (a-svabhāva) in all things, us included. Its
opponents say that if all things lack self, essence and substance, there
should be total randomness. Now we observe regularities and
expectabilities, inside and outside us, and not total randomness. The
regularities and expectabilities are not total, but they are there. They
bespeak of some constancy. The issue is how to interpret such
constancy, be it relative and not absolute. What we think and say does
refer to something with some pattern of regularity and expectability,
to some degree or other. So whether there is self, essence and
substance or not, we observe some modicum of regularities and
expectabilities. It is not the regularities and expectabilities themselves
that cause suffering, for if they did, then suffering would be inevitable.
It is our investing them with self, essence and substance that causes
suffering, and it is our abstaining from doing so that frees us from
suffering. It is our agglutinating them and congealing them into
certainties and fixities that do us in. Again the cause of suffering is
purely subjective, strictly sentimental, so is the solution to suffering,
and so is the state that it leads to, Nirvāṇa (and, by the way, so is
faring-on, Saṃsāra). The detour by way of the objective world is
mere smokescreen, to protect the innocent.

Suffering and the ending of suffering have scarcely anything to do
with the world. We cannot change the world but can only change
ourselves. It is not the matter (of the world) that matters in suffering
and the ending of suffering, it is only the manner in which we deal
with it. The objective world, whether there is or not any permanent
thing in it, whether or not anything in it has self, essence and
substance, is so to speak neutral with regard to suffering and the
ending of suffering. It is agnostic with regard to suffering and the
ending of suffering. It doesn't know suffering and the ending of
suffering and doesn't allocate between them. It merely offers a place
for us to perpetrate suffering on ourselves, or not. Suffering and the
ending of suffering are what we do to ourselves, and the world is a
mere bystander. There is nothing objective that forces us to cause
suffering to ourselves and inflict suffering on ourselves. Again, if
there was something objective that forced us to cause suffering to
ourselves and inflict suffering on ourselves, we should be stuck. It is
only our choice, one way or the other. It is up to us. That is our
margin of freedom. And it is as big as the universe. Nothing limits it,
other than us.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on 6 February 2008, in the thread "Room for loose talk, room for freedom (was Re: math class)," in reply to oxtail citing Robert Epstein's observation that "at the heart of the sense of self is open space." Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

A precise three-part account of why awakening cannot be talked about directly. The first part names the structural problem: any description is self-contradictory, and self-contradictory systems are infinitely exploitable — TH cites Japanese Zen nationalism as the historical proof. The second part names the philosophical problem: the awakened state is strictly sentimental, nothing objective can pin it down. The third part explains the Buddhists' tactical solution: the detour through impermanence and no-self is not metaphysics but pedagogy — loose talk that protects the innocent while pointing beyond itself. The post's conclusion — that suffering and liberation are purely subjective affairs and the world a bystander — distills TH's consistent position across the corpus.

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

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