by Tang Huyen

Things and objects are inferred, not perceived,
constructed, not given, patched up by a view of
mind, not delivered as such, mediate, not
immediate, abstracted, not ready-made.

Except for the whole, uncut and unprocessed field
of sensation before mentation jumps in to cut it up
and process it according to concepts and categories,
everything we deal with, from concrete things like
tables and chairs to abstract concepts like freedom
and truth, are "des pièces rapportées" (patched bits).

In raw sensation, there are no tables and chairs,
there is a continuous though differentiated field of
sensible input, in which no bit is cut off and separated
from the rest. It takes mentation to spot familiar bits
(what Buddhism calls signs), cut them off the rest,
assemble them or disassemble them to make the
things and objects.

This act of assembling or disassembling the bits and
pieces is abstraction, so that concrete things like
tables and chairs are paradoxically the products of
abstraction. Without abstraction they wouldn't exist.

Thus to Buddhism and also to modern analytical
philosophy, things and objects are inferred, not
perceived, constructed, not given, patched up by a
view of mind, not delivered as such, mediate, not
immediate, abstracted, not ready-made.

Of course some things and objects are closer to
sensation and some are very distant from it, but all
of them rely on mentation. Some are fully
independent of sensation, such as a priori systems of
pure reason.

Now the things and objects all depend on the
super-category "something" which is the prime
template. Even God, reality and unreality depend
on it, as they are thought-up (assembled, packaged)
according to it.

The negative theologians deny that God is a thing or
object, just as Buddhists deny that reality (what is
received in the wholesome sensation) is a thing or
object. Even that detour goes by the "something", be
it by denial, though the experience of reality and the
non-experience of God as expounded in negative
theology do not.

When mentation is quiesced, there is no impetus to
pursue signs to form objects or patterns. There is
violence in the pursuing of signs to form objects or
patterns, because mentation seeks to impose itself
on the continuous though differentiated field of
sensation and fit it into existing patterns, and the
most common pattern is the "something". In
strifelessness one gives up on this violence and lets
what happens happen, without interference.

The sloughing off of body and mind in Chinese
Caodong Chan and Japanese Sōtō Zen is one
description of the phenomenon. Of course it
doesn't mean that one loses one's body and mind
and floats without them somewhere else, but that
one stops fitting one's body and mind into the
"something" template. No template is active then.

Supposedly it will be total openness, and if one
acts, it will be "total action". One perceives at one
go, one acts at one go. There will be no part, it will
all be a whole (but not mentated as such, namely as
a whole), whether in contemplation or action.

This state is totally non-symbolic and unmediated.
It goes by its own merit and does not rely on
translation or mediation of any kind to make itself
valid.

There is nothing relative about this state: it is
ultimate, in that it refers to nothing else outside of
itself, but is complete and full in itself.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on January 5, 2005, in reply to Peter Bergwaldheimhausen's quotation of Montaigne: "Notre fait, ce ne sont que des pièces rapportées" (all we are is patched pieces). Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

The essay's move is characteristic Tang Huyen: a Continental literary citation (Montaigne) becomes the key to Buddhist phenomenology. Raw sensation is the only unpatched given; everything else — concrete objects, abstract concepts, God, the self — is assembled by the abstraction-act of mentation from sensible input that does not arrive already cut. The "something" super-category (the prime template underlying all things and objects) is identified as the deepest layer of the construction, the one that negative theologians and Buddhists both implicitly reject by denying that their ultimate referent is a thing or object. The Caodong/Sōtō formulation — "sloughing off of body and mind" — is interpreted not as disembodiment but as the cessation of fitting one's body and mind into that template.

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

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