by Tang Huyen

In December 2006, Tang Huyen takes up a remark by Brian Mitchell about the illusion of choice — whether we are truly "presented with" choices we had no hand in forming, or whether the rejected options simply cease to exist once the fundamental choice is made. Tang Huyen agrees, and illustrates the argument with a practitioner case study. Two people (called Sphere and Fu) had powerful spiritual experiences in adolescence that determined the entire arc of their adult lives. Sphere was honest: he knew the experiences were gone and couldn't let go. Fu was different: he chose to deceive himself into believing the experiences continued all along. That choice — made in early adulthood — was the hinge. Once made, it foreclosed all subsequent recovery. Mental culture requires openness and honesty to work; Fu's first decision was precisely to block himself from himself, so mental culture could never reach him. The crash, when it came decades later, merely followed the logic of that original choice to its conclusion. The whole adult life was prefabricated — pre-ordained — from that single moment of self-betrayal.

These are issues that form the ground of our idea of what it is to be human, and I have said many times onboard that many major options are fated. Either we do not make them but they are made for us, in our stead, or the dice is so loaded that we have no choice about what choice to make. And I'm talking about fundamental choices, major existential choices that will determine the rest of our lives. Once they are made, we invest so much energy to implement them and are so committed to them as part of our self-image that the option of changing them is vastly too costly to even think about. Perhaps the option of changing them is blocked out of our consciousness altogether.

Sphere and Fu got knocked out flat by spiritual experiences that they got in their teenage and never recovered, still haven't recovered now (Sphere presumably is in his fifties, Fu in his sixties). For the rest of their lives (the entirety of their adult lives) they stood in thrall to them, took them to be the acme of their lives and used them as yardstick to measure the rest of their lives. Of course when held up to such norms and standards, the rest of their lives (the entirety of their adult lives) would be lacking and failing, empty and worthless.

At least Sphere was honest and knew that they never occurred again afterward, during the rest of his life (the entirety of his adult life), but couldn't let go of them and take them to be merely pleasant memories. He lived his whole adult life in the shadow of such a massive and overwhelming flash. He lived his whole adult life in the past, so to speak, and the nostalgia of that brief, glorious past dwarfed his present, though he knew that there was no going back.

Fu was different. He started reading Buddhist and Zen books at the age of fourteen, around the time his father died after an hour of agony due to a heart attack. At sixteen or seventeen he had his major garden-variety experience, which impressed him for the rest of his life (the entirety of his adult life). Shortly thereafter, in his early adulthood, he landed in Thailand by pure accident, couldn't bring the experiences back, approached the Thai masters of the Theravada, learnt meditation (the jhanas, etc.), but was too much of an extrovert mesmerised by external stimuli to succeed in it. He then had a choice, a stark choice. Either own up to reality and admit that his teenage experiences were gone for good, or fool himself into thinking that they still recurred all along his adult life. Faced with such an existential choice, which would affect the rest of his life (the entirety of his adult life), he chickened out and chose to fool himself.

Had he chosen to be honest to himself and to admit that he had lost the teenage spiritual experiences for good, such a decision would have been a Buddhist decision, one of honesty, openness, letting go, and would have turned the experiences into Buddhist experiences, whatever they had been. From such a Buddhist decision of letting go of his teenage spiritual experiences, he would have opened up new perspectives and enabled other Buddhist experiences that would have been bigger and better than his teenage experiences.

But he fatefully chose instead to hang on to his teenage experiences and to fool himself into thinking that he still could bring them back all along his adult life. From that moment on, mental culture would never work, and all he would have was a ghost of the past, which totally dominated his present. He tried to fortify it by reading on Buddhism and Zen, to build up an intellectual understanding of Buddhism and Zen, but all he got was an intellectual understanding of Buddhism and Zen. From that ghost of the past (which is now forty-five years old) and his intellectual understanding, he fooled himself into thinking that he was "fully enlightened."

Once he made that decision, he would have to live the rest of his life, not in truth but in falsity. He would have to live the rest of his life in bad faith to himself. He had chosen to hang on to the ghost of his teenage experiences and to stunt and obliterate his present by it. He had chosen defeat in front of his uncontrollable nostalgia for his teenage experiences. The bulk of his life was lived in teenage, and afterward it was a continual replay of that brilliant and fateful period. The present was a mere shadow.

What is ironic about his self-deception is that he preached exactly the contrary of what he practiced. He preached Musashi's "openness on all sides", even as he blocked himself from himself. He preached forgiving oneself even as he couldn't and wouldn't forgive himself for losing those dear teenage experiences. He preached that Buddhism is being oneself (and not somebody else or something else, like some ideal that one thinks up) even as he was not himself but a ghost of his teenage self. Fu lived his adult life, not as he was, but as he was not. He lived in a ghostly life, not as he was (deluded and deprived of his teenage experiences) but as he was not (fully enlightened and able to experience his teenage experiences all along).

Thus Fu built up a massive internal wall to protect himself from himself. But when the crash came, it found that the work had been done to help it, in the form of that wall, and it needed only to fortify it and ramify it further. If Fu had practiced mindfulness, he would have withstood the crash, contained it and perhaps reemerged on the other side better off for the experience. But he had practiced the contrary to mindfulness, in that he blocked himself from himself to protect himself from himself, so his crash had only to push his (existing) self-estrangement and self-alienation further. The initial moment of the crash occurred, and he had no inclination to face up to the crash and fight it. He simply took defeat, once more, and let it rip him. I told Fu about his crash, and Fu totally denied it and the suffering that was caused by it. So he caved in to his crash and identified with his aggressor, namely his crash, and let it rip him.

Fated

Coming back to what Brian said, had Fu any chance of making a different decision in his youth? And if he had made a different decision in his youth, would it have helped him to make the decision to face up to his crash, fight it, contain it, and reemerge on the other side better off for it?

Nope. It was fated. (At this level of attempts at explanation, everything is going to be circular). If he had had the courage to face up to himself in his youth, he would have done it (namely, to face up to himself in his youth). But he hadn't it, so he surrendered. And once he made that first decision in his youth, there was no way he could have faced up to his crash in his old age (he crashed in his sixties), etc. Facing up to the crash and fighting it would have required self-awareness, but he had spent his adult life blocking it. He chose to live as something other than who he was and what he did, and his crash took him from there and fulfilled his wish, namely to live as not who he was and what he did, so it turned him into a zombie who didn't know who he was and what he did. The way he lived his adult life (namely, self-deception and bad faith to himself) played right into the hand of his crash. It was fated.

So, in his case, he was "presented" with choices that he had no hand in the forming of, and a choice once made is made for ever. All his claimed mental culture didn't help. Mental culture works only in openness and honesty, and he couldn't stand himself and had to resort to closedness and dishonesty to deal with himself, so mental culture didn't work. The wall of defence that he set up within himself to protect him from himself blocked mental culture from working. Coming back to what Brian said, the rejected option(s), namely to be open and honest to himself and to face up to his reality, simply ceased to exist and exert pressure. He had too much self-stuff invested in self-deception to even allow them into his consciousness. It would have been too jarring, too unseemly.

He created his own world by his thought and locked himself up accordingly (in his own thought, which served as his own prison), in deadly finality, leaving himself no way out. He caused suffering to himself and inflicted suffering on himself, all for hanging on to those fleeting teenage spiritual experiences that, as Buddhist (but he denied that he was a Buddhist), he should not have taken seriously in the first place. (But that first place is the problem, and Buddhism comes down to getting it right right there and not any later!)

Those teenage spiritual experiences acted like a bone in his throat, that he could neither swallow nor spit out. And they happened perhaps forty years ago or more!

His adult life was like the logical deduction from the initial choice that he made in his youth. Once that choice (or non-choice) was made, the rest of his life merely followed suit, in logical deduction. His crash followed right in the logical premiss of that fateful choice of his youth and merely developed it further. Nothing new happened. It was all pre-fabricated (in religious terms: pre-ordained).

Colophon

Originally posted to alt.philosophy.zen, alt.buddha.short.fat.guy, alt.zen, and talk.religion.buddhism on 17 December 2006. Author: Tang Huyen. The post builds on a remark by Brian Mitchell about the illusoriness of choice, applying it to two practitioners Tang Huyen knew personally. Sphere and Fu are pseudonymized; Fu appears in other Tang Huyen posts under the same name.

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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