by Tang Huyen

Sensation is pure of them.

If I understand Buddhism aright, it never teaches that
your mind and my mind are the same thing. In MN
sutta 1, the Buddha rejects Oneness (ekatva),
Separateness (prthaktva), Manyness (nanatva), and
the reason is that all of them are thought-up and not
in sensation. Raw sensation is continuous and fully
differentiated, but contains no bagging, from
low-level bagging like cats and dogs, tables and chairs
to high-level bagging like oneself and the outside
world (which includes other minds).

The teaching that your mind and my mind are the
same thing is rather Hinduist, and even then
Hinduists will add nuances to it. Buddhism simply
teaches one to let go of all such bagging, high and
low, and open oneself up to receive what happens
in there here and now without interference (though
all that would be bagging, as it is expressed in
thought and language, like "bagging", "here", "now"
and "interference").

It doesn't mean that the mind suddenly goes blank
and doesn't know how to deal with, say, soda cans
and speeding trucks. When needed one can
reactivate one's mentational apparatus but it will be
transparent (and not opaque), light (and not heavy),
thin (and not thick), manipulable (and not unwieldy).
One's mentational apparatus is one's tool and not
one's master, and it is active only when one needs it.
Soda cans, speeding trucks, oneself and the outside
world are still recallable as active items of bagging,
if needed, but they are so recalled only when needed.
They are items of bagging in the sense of convention,
as they are useful for life.

There is no requirement whatsoever to make your
mind and my mind into the same thing, and that
would be blatant delusion. It has no use for life,
and would rather be deleterious to it.

By the way, it would make practically no difference
whether there is one world or multiple worlds, so
long as everybody seems to act like they perceive
the same world. If they seem to act like they
perceive more or less the same world, then that's
good enough for one's life in that world.

And by the same token, it would make little
usefulness to mentate "interrelated and co-dependent"
of everything. They are items of meditation, to help
one get rid of the sense of self, but once one does that,
then they are gotten rid of too. They are thought-up
and don't belong in sensation, just as Oneness (ekatva),
Separateness (prthaktva), Manyness (nanatva) are
thought-up and don't belong in sensation. Ditto with
identity, numerical or otherwise, difference, etc.
Sensation is pure of them.

Why load oneself up with all such garbage? Don't
bother, it's all fluff.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on March 10, 2005, in reply to "dmchess" on the question of whether Buddhism teaches that all minds are one. Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

The interlocutor had been pressing a quasi-Advaita position — that Buddhism teaches a fundamental mind-unity. Tang Huyen's rebuttal draws on MN 1 (Mūlapariyāya Sutta, the Root of All Things), in which the Buddha systematically refuses all metaphysical stances including Oneness (ekatva), Separateness (prthaktva), and Manyness (nanatva), on the grounds that all are conceptual overlays on raw experience. The key term is "bagging" — Tang Huyen's consistent word for the operation of conceptual categorisation at all levels, from "cat" and "chair" up to "self" and "other-minds." Raw sensation is prior to bagging; it is continuous and fully differentiated but contains no categorical cuts. Awakening is not the discovery that everything is one mind but the cessation of loading oneself with conceptual garbage. The final aphorism — "Why load oneself up with all such garbage? Don't bother, it's all fluff" — is Tang Huyen's characteristic move: the rigorous argument followed by the liberating dismissal. Canonical source: MN 1 (Majjhima Nikāya, Mūlapariyāya Sutta).

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

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