by Tang Huyen

Raw sensation in Buddhism is outside of significance and insignificance, meaning and absence of meaning, without value and worthlessness. It does not transcend the world — it transcends significance, meaning and value and their lack. That's the whole point of Buddhist transcendence.

I would rather think that significance and insignificance are
on our side, not on the side of things, even less on the side
of the cosmos. We ascribe significance and insignificance,
whilst their recipients do not necessarily know anything of
them and can perfectly be innocent of them altogether.

To me you collectively are mistaking a contrary negation with
a contradictory negation. What you are making is a contrary
negation, whilst to me what should have been made is a
contradictory negation.

A contrary negation is like saying that a thing is not black. It
is a physical thing-event (including rainbow and light),
therefore it can have colour, and if it is not black, it can be
white or green or yellow or whatever. But a contradictory
negation is like saying that it is not the case that freedom is
black, because freedom is not a physical thing-event and
therefore cannot have colour, it is totally outside the scope of
colour.

Your negation is contrary, in that significance is opposed to
insignificance, both extremes are in the same dimension and
there is nothing outside of the dimension. The dimension is the
whole range of validity of application.

In Buddhism, the negation is contradictory, in that the
significant is opposed to the insignificant, that both extremes
are in the same dimension and there is something outside of the
dimension. The dimension is not the whole range of validity of
application, as there is something that the dimension does not
apply to, is flatly invalid with.

So raw sensation in Buddhism is outside of significance and
insignificance, meaning and absence of meaning (meaninglessness),
without value and without value (worthlessness).

Significance, meaning and value are human categories, so is
their lack, they all belong to the human realm, and do not belong
in raw sensation. Raw sensation is free of all of them. It is
outside of significance, meaning and value and their lack. The
closest one can come to a description of raw sensation is that it
is outside of the realm of significance, meaning and value and
their lack.

It does not transcend the world, it transcends significance,
meaning and value and their lack. That's the whole point of
Buddhist transcendence. It is purely in situ. It is the forsaking
of all valuation, positive and negative. It is totally
non-symbolic.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on June 6, 2004. Author: Tang Huyen (Laughing Buddha, Inc.). Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

Tang Huyen was a scholar of Buddhist studies with deep command of Pāli, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan sources. Posting to talk.religion.buddhism and related groups from 2003 to 2008, he was among the most rigorous analytical voices in the English-language Buddhist Usenet world. This post opens with a precise logical distinction — contrary versus contradictory negation — and deploys it to clarify what Buddhist transcendence actually means: not a higher significance, not cosmic insignificance, but a complete exit from the dimension of significance altogether. Raw sensation is non-symbolic; it does not transcend the world but transcends every human category, including the category of transcendence.

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

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