by Tang Huyen

Freedom is strictly subjective, purely sentimental. There is no truth to truth, otherwise truth would be encumbered with truth.

To approach Buddhism "in the language of Western objectivity" is, if not entirely wrong, at least highly suspect. Because "in the language of Western objectivity", the Four Noble Truths should appear as so many delusions — they definitely don't exist out there for observation, but are high-level inferences that are quite debatable. There is in Buddhism a minimum of not imposing oneself (one's norms and standards) on reality (what happens and doesn't happen) and of opening oneself to such reality, surely, but outside and beyond that, one is free to make what one wants with it. It doesn't impose itself on one, from its own side, but one is free to take it any way one wants. If it was to impose itself on one, then one would be bound to it and not free. But since one is free, one can take it any way one wants. The monk who is being sawn apart piece by piece — objectively speaking, is being subject to the worst kind of torture — is yet free to not get angry and vindictive, but to beam friendliness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity on his torturers. Indeed he is free to take them as his friends and redeemers, and not torturers. That is his space of freedom. Reality in the Western objective sense has nothing to do with it. He is not beholden to it. He is open to it, but is otherwise free to take it any way he wants. Objectively speaking he would wholly flunk the observations in true objectivity. Subjectively he is open to what happens and yet free to take it any way he wants. Freedom is strictly subjective, purely sentimental.

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment." — Marcus Aurelius.

"Things of themselves cannot take the least hold of the soul, nor have any access to her, nor deflect or move her; but the soul alone deflects and moves herself, and whatever judgements she deems it right to form, in conformity with them she fashions for herself the things that submit themselves to her from without." — Marcus Aurelius.

There is no truth to truth, otherwise truth would be encumbered with truth. Freedom cannot be pinned down to anything, otherwise it would be bound to that something and be bondage, not freedom. Freedom has no reference, surely no objective reference.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on April 10, 2008. Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

Tang Huyen was a scholar of Buddhist studies with deep command of Pāli, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan sources. Posting to talk.religion.buddhism and related groups from 2003 to 2008, he was among the most rigorous analytical voices in the English-language Buddhist Usenet world. This post responds to a Finnish correspondent's attempt to reconcile Buddhism with Western scientific objectivity. TH rejects the frame entirely: Buddhist freedom is not objectifiable — it is the space in which the subject is free to take reality any way she wants. The Parable of the Saw (MN I.129), the monk being sawn apart while maintaining mettā, is TH's recurring touchstone for this claim. The closing epigrams — "no truth to truth, otherwise truth would be encumbered with truth" — are among his most compressed formulations of Buddhist anti-foundationalism.

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

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