by Tang Huyen
In March 2008, Tang Huyen posted to talk.religion.buddhism a reflection on two modes of Buddhist teaching that appear to contradict each other: the detailed, obsessive-compulsive mindfulness practice where the meditator controls thought precisely, and the higher critique in which all thing-events are described as "unobtainable."
The Diamond Sutra's declaration — "The past thought cannot be got at, the present thought cannot be got at, the future thought cannot be got at" — is the fulcrum. If no thought can be pinned down, then the entire enterprise of mapping things into awakening and delusion loses its footing. The post traces this thread from the Sutta Pitḍaka's higher critique ("self and what belongs to self are unobtainable and cannot be made known as real and established in the present things") through the Diamond Sutra's famous triple negation, to a radical practical conclusion: problems are dissolved not by solving them in the positive but by dropping them wholesale — ceasing to regard them as problems at all.
The essay ends with a description of total openness as the practical upshot: "In the seen there will be just the seen." No pre-conceived framework. No slots to fit things into. What happens, experienced in the mode of letting go, blown out in the instant without remainder.
That night, the Buddha relaxed all the way, spontaneously quiesced his thought, and poof, all his problems disappeared on their own accord. He did not solve them in the positive, for to do so would imply to take them seriously, on their own terms, and he had devoted the previous six years to just that mindset, blowing up the problems out of all proportions, magnifying them to their logical end, and glorifying them as solutions — the Jaina regimen of self-mortification and self-starvation testified to that unforgiving ideology. When he realised that such a wholesale arsenal of gory self-repression and self-denial had been a total error, he relented, took milk (which led his five fellow Jaina monks to think that he had fallen back to luxury, and after his awakening they would become his first five disciples), and relaxed. He didn't do anything in the positive, didn't exercise thought to find solutions to his problems, but merely relaxed, went all the way in that direction (the exact opposite to his strenuous, unrelenting exercise of the previous six years), and awoke.
Two Levels of Teaching
He did talk about exerting total control over thought, being able to think what one liked and not thinking what one did not like. He detailed the factors that would cause suffering in minute details, and specified the ways to fight them, also in minute details. Mindfulness was deployed to be mindful of infractions and to correct them, in total concentration. This was his obsessive-compulsive side, which in some way was in continuity with his "control freak" side that had been in control during his six years of hard penance.
Somewhere in the middle of his teaching, he also presented a totally opposite picture. He usually taught the above stuff, at the first level, but at one time went one level up, performed a "higher critique" of his usual teaching, and said: "self and what belongs to self are unobtainable and cannot be made known as real and established in the present things, the views, fetters and latencies in the mind are unobtainable and cannot be made known." This takes all thing-events to be fluffy, slippery, unobtainable (they cannot be got at). Since they cannot be pinned down, the only possible thing to do about them is to be serene and let them be. If the views, fetters and latencies in the mind are unobtainable and cannot be made known, how can one cleanly and accurately map something into awakening and something else into delusion?
Later, the Diamond scripture says: "The past thought cannot be got at, the present thought cannot be got at, the future thought cannot be got at." If the past thought cannot be got at, the present thought cannot be got at, the future thought cannot be got at, how can one cleanly and accurately map something into awakening and something else into delusion?
What good are boxes for? If so why should one insist on being right? On what basis?
All Support Is Unsupported
In Buddhism, from the Buddha on down, it is said that "All support is unsupported," "All foundation is unfounded," "All basis is baseless," "All establishment is unestablished," "All ground is groundless," "All bottom is bottomless." One drops everything and walks free. It takes nothing and leaves nothing. There is no truth to truth, otherwise truth would be encumbered with truth.
Dropping Problems Wholesale
What is experienced is experienced, not blocked out or distorted (many people spend the greater part of their energy blocking themselves from themselves and bending themselves strenuously to fit a certain framework, as if they were contortionists), but it is experienced in the mode of letting go. One just lets it pass, like water under bridges, and creates no problem thereby. Problems come from the resistance to what occurs, not in what occurs itself in the raw.
One doesn't try to fit experience into any framework, but lets it come just the way it comes and one lets it go just the way it goes. One doesn't try to bend it into any framework and doesn't try to freeze it into any stability. One just experiences it the way it is (yathā-bhūtam), not the way one wants it to be (yathā-praṇihitam) or the way one thinks it to be (yathā-cetayitam).
It is as if one pulled the rug from under one at every instant, without leaving any station long enough for any thought or feeling to take a stand on, for or against. As the Buddha says: "In the seen there will be just the seen."
All delusional activities are tautological and recursive, in that they stroke themselves to keep themselves going; and dismantling them is the job of Buddhist wisdom, which it does simply by dropping them, lock, stock and barrel, and that is how the knot is unravelled. To try to solve them bit by bit is to fall into their trap, which consists in taking them seriously and in their own terms. That merely reinforces them further.
In Buddhism, a problem is solved, not when one arrives at a solution to it, in the positive, but quite simply when one drops the problem wholesale and no longer mentates it, in the negative. Instead of dwelling on problems and thereby giving them weight and consistency, one does not regard them as problems, and thus drops them as problems. Poof and they're gone, for good. As if by magic.
Total Openness
In this light, Buddhism teaches us to strive only for one thing, the letting go of the past and the future, even the letting go of what happens right now, so that we do not identify with it, for or against, but just let it flow on, and thus do not create problems for ourselves, regarding it or anything else. In that state, we can amaze ourselves with the joy of the moment, yet not be carried away with it.
Yes, each moment can be joyous when lived in the mode of detachment and letting go, and no, we don't hang on to it — the moment, the joy experienced in it, or whatever else.
One merely opens up, and when one opens up, one does not know what it is that one opens up to. If one had a pre-conceived idea or concept or image of what it is that one opens up to, like Buddhist suchness or whatever, one would be closed and not open. When one opens up, one puts no condition on it, but merely opens up. There are no problems to solve and no solutions for them to be found. In the absence of slots to fit things into, such as problems to solve and solutions for them, total openness would take care of everything. "In the seen there will be just the seen." Why bother with anything else?
Colophon
Originally posted to talk.religion.buddhism, alt.zen, alt.buddha.short.fat.guy, and alt.philosophy.zen by Tang Huyen, March 8, 2008. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.
This essay presents one of Tang Huyen's most sustained accounts of the "higher critique" within Buddhism — the level at which the first-level mindfulness teaching is superseded by the recognition that all thing-events are unobtainable. The Diamond Sutra's triple negation (past/present/future thought cannot be got at) is deployed not as abstract metaphysics but as a practical dissolution of the very project of distinguishing awakening from delusion. The essay's series of structural equivalences — "All support is unsupported, all foundation is unfounded" — points toward a radical non-positionality that Tang Huyen elsewhere identifies with wu-wei and the a-pratisthita-citta of the Diamond Sutra. The closing description of total openness — in which one's only task is to let pass what passes, with no pre-conceived framework — is a vivid practical account of what the higher critique looks like from the inside.
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: <[email protected]>.
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