by Tang Huyen

"The alleviation of suffering does not rest so much with the content per se as with the manner that deals with it. Once the right attitude prevails, the content becomes fungible."

To have beliefs and ideas is not in and of itself a damnation. To have thoughts and feelings is not in and of itself a damnation. What matters is not the matter (such as them) but the manner of how to handle them. If they are invested in, as in "the self-stuff invested by us," they are real, but if they are not invested in, they are fluffy. Their weight and consistency are purely invested, and if the investment in them is slight, so are they.

On the other hand, to have one idea, or a few ideas, and to invest heavily and massively in it or them, in the "throw all your eggs in one basket" manner, would lead to fixity, monomania and obsession.

Of course it would be ideal to, at least some of the time, empty out the mind of all intellective content and merely receive what happens as it comes in through sensation, without adding any layer of interpretation (which includes daydreaming that would smother it). But absent such a state of emptiness of mind, one can entertain any content and yet invest little in it, so that it is mere fluff, something that comes and goes without much consequence. That does not mean that one cannot pay it close attention, but that one merely attends to it without getting washed away by it. If it comes, it comes, and if it goes, it goes — one observes it without interfering with it, one way or another. It does not drag one along and trap one's mind, and one doesn't beat it down. One lives so to speak in pacific coexistence with anything that pops into one's mind, whatever it is or is not. If Nirvāṇa comes, fine, if Saṃsāra comes, fine, if God comes, fine, if the Devil comes, fine, if mind comes, fine, if matter comes, fine — they are treated equally, in measure and proportion, balance and perspective, detachment and equanimity, in humour, irony, levity. The alleviation of suffering does not rest so much with the content per se as with the manner that deals with it. Once the right attitude prevails, the content becomes fungible.

This is what is meant by the saying that Saṃsāra is Nirvāṇa: not that Saṃsāra is identical to Nirvāṇa, or that no difference remains, but that the manner of dealing with what arises — without clinging, without beating down — is the only difference that matters. As Ram Dass once described the difference between a good trip and a bad trip: the sensations and experiences were exactly the same in every way, except as the roller coaster begins to accelerate down the first hill, in the bad trip one clings to the rails and screams, and in the good trip one says "here we go again" and embraces the present moment without clinging. The coaster is the same. The difference is the clinging.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on 3 August 2008, in the "Real men don't eat quiche" thread. Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

The "self-stuff invested by us" is TH's citation of a phrase from the early newsgroup regular known as the "real DharmaTroll," a practitioner TH respected for genuine Buddhist understanding. The manner/matter distinction is related to but distinct from the content-fungibility thesis in "The Perfect Box" (July 2008) and the method/truth distinction in "Falsity to Truth" (May 2008): here the emphasis falls on the investment level rather than the pragmatic effectiveness of the method. The Ram Dass roller coaster illustration TH cites is from Ram Dass's early speaking and teaching on LSD, widely circulated in Buddhist and consciousness communities of the 1970s–80s. Read alongside "It's All Dharma" (2008) and "Whole and Part" (2008).

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

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