by Tang Huyen

"Awakening is an attitude, not a specific content, like the intuition of some truth or reality, or a specific experience, with all the attendant bells and whistles."

That is what many moralists, like Kant, say, regardless of the actual
content of the morality that they preach. The ideals, whatever they
are, may never be reached, and if they are reached, they may never be
reached securely and permanently, so that at best if they are reached
at all, they are asymptotically reached, episodically reached (the
metaphor of the blind men touching the elephant applies here), but
they are worth striving for nevertheless, in that they are the best
(summum bonum) that we can do, even if we can't get them all the
time, once for all, and even if only some of us are ever going to get a
taste of it once in a while, as a matter of grace (and not entitlement)
or whatever.

In the history of Buddhism, the debate on awakening raged on and on.
Some people and sects took it to be reversible, so that some awakeneds
(arhat-s) can fall back; some people and sects took it to be irreversible,
so that the awakeneds cannot fall back. Some people and sects took it
as rare and accessible only to a small elite; some people and sects took
it to be universal and a birthright. Some people and sects took it as
quick; some people and sects took it to be gradual. Etc. But regardless
of the debate (which clearly points to the fuzziness of the nature of
awakening, which fits the Buddhist teaching of relativity and ambiguity
of life), one can yet strive for it, keeping in mind its fuzzy nature and
the fuzzy nature of its attainment. (In fact it can be argued that
somebody who keeps in mind the fuzziness and ambiguity of everything
is awakened, regardless of the specifics, say, of his belief and practice,
so that awakening is an attitude, not a specific content, like the
intuition of some truth or reality, or a specific experience, with all the
attendant bells and whistles, say, heaven opening up, lights flashing
and angels singing in chorus). Also, given its desirability (remember, it
is the summum bonum, no less), one should expect some deceit
regarding attaining it. On top of that, one should expect some such
deceit to be unconscious, iow that the people who make the claim are
sincere, but that their claim is fake.

Do the best you can, and that very effort may in and of itself be what
you ever get. If you get peace, harmony, serenity, etc., that may well
be the very best ever in human experience. Whatever else that is touted
may well be vapour, candy to lure kids. But if you get peace, harmony,
serenity, etc., what else would you want? Contrariwise if you think that
you get peace, harmony, serenity, etc., and yet are unhappy with them,
you haven't got them yet.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on 25 February 2008, in the thread "In Defense of Hypocrisy," in reply to Lifeform arguing that sincerity in striving toward an ideal should not be condemned even if the ideal is unattained. Author: Tang Huyen. Original Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

A short, dense teaching on awakening that moves through three registers. First, the Kantian register: ideals are the summum bonum even if only asymptotically approached. Second, the historical register: Buddhism's own debates about awakening (reversible/irreversible, elite/birthright, sudden/gradual) are evidence of awakening's irreducible fuzziness — and that fuzziness is itself a teaching, not a bug. Third, the practical register: awakening is an attitude toward everything, not a specific experience; the standard for having attained it is the quality of one's peace. The closing inversion is characteristically TH: if you have peace and serenity and still want more, you haven't got them.

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

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