by Tang Huyen

It is useful but its usefulness is limited, and it is
useful as a tool and harmful as a master.

Not a question that conduces to the ending of suffering.
A question that when pursued for its own sake is best
left to speculation or science.

The direction that conduces to the ending of suffering
is to see that thought has some correlation to reality, for
sure, because it is successful in dealing with reality —
otherwise all humans would die en masse quick — but it
is only partially successful, never fully successful.
Thought most often works serially, one bit at a time, and
even when it works in parallel, its processing power is
limited, and its first and foremost limit is thought itself,
a form into which it has to fit what it processes in order
to process it, but can there be any guarantee that the form
of thought allows for absence of distortion to what it
attempts to process?

A radically different perspective is attained when thought
is quiesced, not forcibly but gently, and then reality is
free to blossom forth unhindered, and especially
unhindered by thought. From there, upon reflection (as
in the absence of thought one cannot make distinctions
and comparisons), thought is seen to be limited and
limiting, distorted and distorting, even if it is successful
to a certain degree. It is useful but its usefulness is
limited, and it is useful as a tool and harmful as a master.
The ending of suffering corresponds with the quiescence
of thought, where thought no longer jumps in to interfere
with reality's blossoming forth.

"What and what they think it, it is otherwise."
"In the seen there will be just the seen."
"Do not mentate anything."

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on January 15, 2005, in reply to Bmitch's question "How deeply into being does thought go?" Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

The essay makes a minimal but sharp argument: thought's value is real but circumscribed. It succeeds well enough that the species survives — but it processes reality by fitting it into its own form, and there is no guarantee that form preserves what it processes without distortion. The solution is not to argue with thought but to quiesce it gently, at which point reality blossoms forth on its own terms. Three canonical phrases close the argument: "What and what they think it, it is otherwise" (from the Āgama tradition, Tang Huyen's rendering); "In the seen there will be just the seen" (Udāna 1.10, Bāhiya Sutta); and "Do not mentate anything" (appearing in the Āgama tradition as a summary of the cessation of mentation). Together they name the same posture: thought stepped back, reality received.

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

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