by Tang Huyen

Of he who is gone, there is no standard. There is nothing of him
any more by which one could talk of him.

Classically, this is the issue of double standards, whereby
the deluded abide in norms and standards whereas the
awakened are free of norms and standards. The Buddhist
saint is beyond any norm and standard, outside of any
reference.

In the early canon, the awakened go past good and evil,
merit and demerit, and have dropped them all and are
free of them.

Dhammapada, XXVI, 412, tr. Thanissaro:

"He has gone
  beyond attachment here
  for both merit and evil —
  sorrowless, dustless, and pure:
       he's what I call
       a brahman."

The same, tr. Buddharakkhita: "He who in this world has
transcended the ties of both merit and demerit, who is
sorrowless, stainless and pure — him do I call a holy man."

As the Sutta-nipata V, 6, v. 1075–1076 says (Lamotte,
Traité, 235–236):

Upasiva: "When the sage is gone, should it be said that he
is no more, should it be said that he is exempt from pain
forever? Explain to me, Wise one, because you know it."

The Buddha: "Of he who is gone, there is no standard
(atthangatassa na pamanam atthi). There is nothing of
him any more by which one could talk of him (yena nam
vajju tam tassa na tthi). All the givens that made him up
are gone, all paths of speech are abandoned (sabbesu
dhammesu samuhatesu, samuhata vada-patha pi sabbe ti)."

The exchange is about the saint after death, but it is true
also of the saint in life, for he has relinquished all reference,
and since he has relinquished all reference — including the
Law, the Dharma — there is nothing by which others can
judge him. This is part of the double standards, by which
ordinary persons must observe standards including morals,
but the freed have not.

"He meditates not leaning on earth, water, fire, air, the place
of infinity of space, the place of the infinity of consciousness,
the place of nothingness, the place of neither notion nor
not-notion; he meditates not leaning on this world, the world
beyond, on whatever is seen, heard, sensed, cognised,
obtained, sought after, followed after by mind, the sun and
the moon, without leaning on them he meditates, because
he has un-done (vi-bhuta) the notion of earth to the notion
of the All (sarva). To him thus meditating, the gods with
Indra, with Brahma and with Prajapati, even from afar bow
down, saying:

'We worship you, thoroughbred of men, we worship you,
most excellent of men. For what it is dependent on which
you meditate, that we cannot comprehend!'"

— AN, V, 323–326 (11, 10); SA, 926, 235c–236b; Sanskrit in
Louis de la Vallée Poussin, "Notes on Sunyata and the Middle
Path," Indian Historical Quarterly, 1928, 168; Bodhisattva-bhumi,
49–50; Lamotte, Traité, 86, n. 2.

It is to be noticed that when the mind does not coagulate
what it receives into bits, it itself cannot be seen by others.

After the Buddha teaches that "self and what belongs to self
are unobtainable in truth and reality," the gods — those with
Indra, with Brahma, with Prajapati — do not succeed in their
search for "this is the Tathagata's consciousness which leans
on something (idam nissitam tathagatassa vinnanam)."
(MN, I, 140 (22); MA, 200, 766a6–7.)

If others with spiritual powers can see what one is thinking,
it is only because one is thinking something, even if
unconsciously. If one has sheer awareness only, how can
they see anything?

To sum up: the freed do not lean on anything, do not
coagulate anything into bits and pieces, but perceive whole
— though they don't mentate "whole" versus "broken," "one"
versus "many" — have no reference, observe no standard,
rather float free, free of them all, and therefore cannot be
seen by others, cannot be judged by others.

Therefore, they act freely, unencumbered by norms and
standards. However they have also exhausted the three
poisons — craving, hatred, error — so they act free of those.
They can opt to act or not to act, to teach or not to teach.
The deluded may unjustly impose their own norms and
standards on those who are free of norms and standards.
It is not easy to adjudge those who are beyond norms and
standards, because to adjudge them is to fit them into
norms and standards.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on January 26, 2005, in response to a question by dmchess about whether Expedient Means (upāya) can justify deception, incivility, or "general assholishness" in spiritual teaching. Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

Tang Huyen sidesteps the question of permission and goes to the structural fact: the Buddhist saint is not subject to norms at all, not because norms are waived for him, but because he has dissolved the very thing that makes norms grip. The canonical sources he marshals — the Dhammapada's brahman beyond merit and demerit, the Sutta-nipata's exchange on the "standard" of the gone-forth, the Anguttara passage on the meditator not leaning on any support — all converge on the same point: the freed cannot be seen, tracked, or judged, because they have no fixed shape on which judgment could land. The note on the MN passage about the Tathagata's "unsupported consciousness" extends this: even the gods with spiritual powers cannot locate the mind of the truly freed, because there is nothing there to coagulate into a findable object.

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

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