by Tang Huyen

That's the only difference between faring-on and blowing-out. What happens hasn't changed, only how one receives it has changed — but such a change!

I agree that the main issue in Buddhism is what
works, more precisely what works in helping us
end our suffering or at least alleviate it.

All the talk and claim about reality and suchness
can be useful when some people grossly drift
from how others perceive them — for example if
some people are deluded in the clinical sense
and delusional in the clinical sense (which has
happened on these boards), or to all appearance
claim to be somebody other than who they are
and what they do, especially claim to be the
contrary of who they are and what they do
(which has happened also on these boards).
They may need to be reminded of what normal
social reality is like.

Other than that, all the talk and claim about
reality and suchness is propaganda. The Buddha
has to sell his teaching in order to leave an
establishment and thus has to embellish it with
the mythology that he condemns to his monks.
The Chinese Chan school, which claims to reach
Buddhahood directly outside of scriptures and
teachings, shamelessly produces truckloads of
propaganda to justify and validate itself — such
as that mythology of direct transmission from
the Buddha on down, generation by generation,
with a genealogical tree where names of the
same Indian monks appear a number of times
because they are different phonetic
transliterations of the same names and therefore
are taken by the Chinese to be names of different
people.

That by cultivation one attains to states that are
calm, peaceful, cool (physically and mentally),
blissful, wherein everything lights up as if to
justify and validate Mother Nature — this says
nothing about such states, other than that they
are calm, peaceful, and so on. Whatever happens
in such states, and more specifically whatever
one encounters as what happens in such states,
has no right to be elevated above mundane reality
as true reality or ultimate reality or suchness. What
matters is that one attains to calm, peace, especially
peace with oneself, and does not create afflictions
to oneself and does not inflict afflictions on oneself.
Other than that, it is the same reality as every-day
reality, though perhaps more aesthetically pleasing
because not subject to mentational filters.

Now that I have mentioned mentational filters,
I don't mean to imply that when they are lifted,
one perceives ultimate reality or suchness or
whatever, but only that when they are lifted, in
whole or in part, one attains to calm, peace, and
that what one encounters as reality is more
aesthetically pleasing, though it is the same
reality as when one is not in such states. What
works in helping one to end suffering also works
to make the reality facing one more aesthetically
pleasing, though it is recognisably the same
reality. By merely opening oneself up more to the
reality that one faces, one makes it more
aesthetically pleasing, though the change is
purely internal.

But isn't that the lesson of Buddhism, that one
can change oneself, really and truly and not by
mere fakery, and that by changing oneself one
changes the way one receives what happens?
What happens hasn't changed, only how one
receives it has changed — but such a change!

That's the only difference between faring-on
(Saṃsāra) and blowing-out (Nirvāṇa).

The problem is that if one is to tell others just
that, it doesn't sound convincing enough, for the
change is merely internal. It's too drab and
pedestrian. One rather has to sell it to them by
telling them that in addition to internal change
(namely, that one attains to calm, peace, and so
on), what one encounters as reality facing one is,
not just more aesthetically pleasing, but also real
reality, ultimate reality, suchness. That adds some
zing to it. It makes it objective, rather than just
subjective — though ending suffering, or at least
alleviating it, is purely subjective, boringly
subjective. One hasn't to shake the world to end
one's suffering but only to stop creating afflictions
to oneself and inflicting afflictions on oneself; the
rest is mere creampuff. And to attempt to shake
the world probably only adds to one's suffering,
though some people are into that.

I take reality, or what faces one, in the
boring-to-tears sense that it is what doesn't go
away when one no longer believes in it. It is what
one can't wish away.

The Buddha emphasises that there is a reality that
often resists and fails our wishes and desires. It is
this reality that comes back to bite those who are
into self-deception. They can deceive themselves
but can't deceive Mother Nature.

"When a monk does not dwell devoted to
cultivation (bhāvanā), even though such a wish as
this might arise in him: 'Oh, that my mind might
be liberated from the cankers by non-clinging!',
yet his mind is not liberated from the cankers by
non-clinging. For what reason? It should be said:
because of lack of cultivation (a-bhāvitatā)."
SN, III, 153 (22, 101).

"Form is not-self. If form was self, this form would
not lead to affliction, and it could be had of form:
'Let my form be thus, let my form not be thus.'
And because form is not-self that it therefore leads
to affliction, and that it cannot be had of form:
'Let my form be thus, let my form not be thus.'"
SN, III, 66 (22, 59).

Even then one can still drop it and walk free,
though one still has to live in it. But one doesn't
need any other reality than that one to end one's
suffering, or at least to alleviate it. Dropping it
effectively stops one's suffering, at least whilst one
is actively dropping it.

Tang Huyen

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on December 24, 2005, in reply to Hollywood Lee on the "direct path" and what Buddhism can legitimately claim. Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

An unusual post in the corpus: Tang Huyen deflates his own metaphysics. Where he often describes quiesced mentation as the world lighting up in coherence, harmony, and rightness (miao-you, wonderful existence), here he insists those descriptions are phenomenological, not ontological — they do not license claims about "ultimate reality" or "suchness". The change Buddhism effects is purely internal. This is "boring" but it is enough. The propagandistic additions ("it's not just more pleasing, it's real reality!") are Tang Huyen's explanation for why Buddhist traditions oversell their product. The rhetorical move is significant: he separates the claim he endorses (cultivation ends suffering by internal change) from the claims he doesn't (that quiesced states reveal a privileged access to suchness). The two SN passages at the end drive the point home: reality bites back. One can't wish away the law of form-is-not-self, and one can't wish into existence the liberation that only comes from cultivation. Drop it and walk free — but you actually have to drop it.

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

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