"The issue is, whether one uses one's mentational apparatus as a tool, or it as master uses one as its slave."

Judging always involves the judge, the act of judgement which goes by some norm or standard, and the object judged — a thing, an event, or a person. A concept is already a judgement: in thinking that something is a person or a rock.

The norm or standard that is taken as basis for the judgement can be fairly objective, in that most people in that culture will accept it, but it is valid only for that culture. Equality is a modern creation of the Enlightenment, though Buddhism twenty-four centuries ago did manage to proclaim it (but practiced badly — for example in Tibet, where slavery was standard). In most societies equality, if people could think up such a concept, would be an abomination and advocates of it would be executed quickly. What is morally right and wrong is variable, from place to place, and in the same place from time to time. Some early Stoic and Cynic masters advocated having sex with one's old parents to make them happy. Many Indian ascetics right down to the present torture themselves fiercely and unforgivingly — the Buddha did it too, before his awakening, for six years. Is that bad? To the Jaina-s, it is supremely good. Modern societies condemn polygamy and polyandry, but at the same time promote freedom of the individuals. If adults are to be free, surely they can choose to have multiple husbands and wives, so long as legal and financial ramifications are taken care of?

One tries to be objective, but one's objectivity is another's bias. In the ideal state of awakening, one has pretty much thinned out one's biases and made them transparent to oneself, and reworked one's pattern of behaviour and of judgement so as to avoid creating suffering to oneself — but how can one be sure that one is totally objective and fair? Chan masters bash each other and each other's methods constantly. One Chan master's method of awakening is another Chan master's method of delusion. It seems that there is no compromise possible, therefore no shared truth accepted by both.

Thus the ideal is not to judge at all — and this spares oneself the act of creating a self to make the judgement. This is total non-attribution, which is possible only in meditation, because if one does anything, even like walking, one has to engage one's mentational apparatus to know what is up and what is down, and what is empty space to walk in and what is obstacle to avoid, and one has to decide whether to put the right-hand foot forward first or the left-hand foot forward first. Non-duality is impossible if one wants to walk. One has to commit oneself to one side or another, even if only for an instant.

So total non-attribution is the ideal, but it is useless for dealing with anything at all. In dealing with anything at all, one has to activate one's mentational apparatus. The issue is, whether one uses one's mentational apparatus as a tool, or it as master uses one as its slave.

If one is to use it as a tool and nothing more, one has control over it, so that it doesn't impose itself on one — and one will not then impose it on the outside world. This is rigidity, in extreme cases becoming delusion in the clinical sense.

Right is just the absence of wrong in this sense. It is flexibility, adaptibility, and even dancing. In extreme cases it is total absence of attribution. This is talk not of content but of attitude, not of matter but of manner. The world won't change, and therefore Buddhism only teaches one to change one's attitude to it, one's manner of dealing with it. Outside of that, Buddhism has no relevance.

Buddhist freedom comes when one drops all preconceptions, all frameworks, all models, especially the self, and submits oneself in the raw to sensation without any interpretation. In such circumstance, without any universalising elements like concepts and frameworks — regardless of whether they level up or level down — individual responses are bound to vary the most.

Every Buddha experiences the same nirvana, which is the extinction of the fire of desire, and this extinction of desire will free them from their mentation which is driven by desire, precisely, and without mentation, they are able to live in just their raw sensation, which is not force-fitted into universalising elements like concepts and frameworks, and therefore their experience of their sensation will vary the most.

Their experience will be totally unique to them, totally individualistic, as it is not levelled up or levelled down by the same straightjackets, namely concepts and frameworks. Two of them, standing right next to each other and looking at the same scene, will experience it in totally different ways, because neither will cut up that wholesome experience and label the parts as "tree", "cat", "cloud", etc. Almost literally, they have nothing to share, with each other and with others, except the spontaneity and normlessness. The public cases are records of such sharings of spontaneity and normlessness.

Once freed and awakened, the awakeneds have no belief, faith, value, meaning, structure, framework, concept and category, basket and cage. They have dropped them all. That dropping constitutes freedom and awakening. There is no knowledge or domain specific to freedom and awakening, but the free and awakeneds live in the same world as the bound and deludeds — the only difference between them is the absence or presence of attachments, and the products of attachments, such as the self or "I" or what-belongs-to-self or the mine, and all the attendant characteristics, such as belief, faith, value, meaning, structure, framework, concept and category, basket and cage.

Tang Huyen — talk.religion.buddhism, 28 Jul 2006.
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