by Tang Huyen

"Without mindfulness there is no Buddhist practice, and therefore there will be no ending of suffering, regardless of any intellectual understanding of Buddhism, which can be fancy."

The workings of suffering and the ending of suffering should be simple and easy to figure out. If you do something and suffering arises from it, then stop doing it. But we all know that we don't operate that way. We can tell ourselves what to do and what not to do, and can't obey our own orders. We know what is good for us, but do something else instead. Conscious thought in general and reason in particular are like the tail that tries to wag the dog.

"Monks, it is like a man walking about, aiming after a water-snake, searching after a water-snake, looking about for a water-snake. He might see a large water-snake and he might take hold of it by a coil or by its tail; the water-snake, having rounded on him, might bite him on his hand or arm or on another part of his body; from this cause he might come to dying or to pain like unto dying. What is the reason for this? Monks, it is because of his wrong grasp of the water-snake. Even so, monks, do some foolish men here master dhamma, etc. These, having mastered the dhamma, do not test the meaning of these things by intuitive wisdom, and these things whose meaning is untested by intuitive wisdom, do not become clear; they master this dhamma simply for the advantage of reproaching others and for the advantage of gossiping, and they do not arrive at that goal for the sake of which they mastered dhamma. These things, badly grasped by them, conduce for a long time to their woe and sorrow. What is the reason for this? It is because of a wrong grasp of things." (MLS, I, 172; MN, I, 133)

People can spend a lifetime building up an impressive intellectual understanding of Buddhism, of what to do and what not to do, right down to the least details, but unless they put such knowledge to practice, it doesn't do them any good, and if they mistake such intellectual understanding for real attainment (which latter would only come from practice), their mistake (which usually is intentional) conduces for a long time to their woe and sorrow, in closed circle.

The Buddha talks of testing what one has been taught, and testing it by intuitive wisdom. Such wisdom comes only from actual practice and not from mere intellectual understanding. And the actual practice aims at helping the practitioner pull himself together into a single piece, so that he can act as a single piece, in total action, and because of that unity, what he knows is the same as what he attains to, and because of that accord, he can implement his intellectual understanding, right up to dropping self and what-belongs-to-self inclusively (and this includes intellectual understanding).

Some convoluted methods (dharmas) work, and some simple methods (dharmas) work, but all of them are based on mindfulness and all of them help the practitioner pull himself together into a single piece, so that he can act as a single piece, in total action, right up to dropping self and what-belongs-to-self inclusively, and this, regardless of specifics and externalities (some of which can look ridiculous and irrational from the outside). Without mindfulness there is no Buddhist practice, and therefore there will be no ending of suffering, regardless of any intellectual understanding of Buddhism, which can be fancy.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on 6 September 2008, in the "Real men don't eat quiche" thread. Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

The water-snake parable (MN I, 133 — the Alagaddūpama Sutta, "The Parable of the Water-Snake") is one of the Buddha's central statements about wrong grasp of dhamma: grasping the teaching at the wrong end, like seizing a water-snake by the tail, produces harm rather than freedom. TH uses it to establish the distance between intellectual understanding and actual attainment — a distance that only practice, specifically mindfulness-based practice aimed at total action, can bridge. The "tail that tries to wag the dog" is TH's own formulation, cutting to the paradox: reason cannot fix reason's limits from the inside.

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

🌲