by Tang Huyen

In December 2004, Tang Huyen posted to talk.religion.buddhism in response to a thread accusing Buddhist discourse of "fluff" — theories with no predictive value that can be applied after the fact to justify anything. Tang Huyen accepted the charge with enthusiasm and turned it inside out: the fluff is canonical, and its canonical name is the Perfection of Wisdom.

Chaos or cosmos, one thing is to be kept in mind: Buddhism is about suffering and the ending of suffering. Whilst it may be difficult to ascertain how far along the path somebody may be, one derivative product is that somebody who has made some progress on it becomes flexible and hard to pin down.

Such a person is not attached to much of anything, including what he says and does, and may deny what he says and does in good conscience and switch to something else quickly, because he doesn't identify with whatever, including what he says and does. What he says and does, he says and does, and poof, it's gone. He is trackless and traceless, and folks, that's in the Canon.

Such a person can behave like a weasel, and the Buddhist canon provides plenty of incriminating evidence of the most blatant kind. In the Buddhist tradition, beginning with the Buddha, the Buddha regularly denies what he teaches, dismissing it as mere raft to help folks cross to the other shore and not to be kept thereafter, if indeed it has ever done its intended job of helping folks to carry themselves to the other shore. The Perfection of Wisdom scriptures regularly say that the Buddha never utters a single word.

Do those people (the Buddha included) lie? Do they act like weasels? In their case, isn't it the case that it can be applied perfectly after the fact and in such a way that even if wrong it is right and even if right it is wrong?

The "it" can be something like: "I say a word," "I teach something," "there is a path to follow in order to end suffering," "there is a fruit that can be attained."

Those statements, and any number of other ones in Buddhism, are true if false and false if true, back and forth.

So, the Buddha's teaching and all Buddhist teachings are fluff, aren't they? If they proclaim the absence of any substance anywhere at any time, surely that absence applies even more to them and what they say and do, doesn't it? Don't they glorify fluff, itself in itself?

Colophon

Originally posted to talk.religion.buddhism by Tang Huyen, December 15, 2004. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

Tang Huyen was a prolific and meticulous contributor to talk.religion.buddhism whose posts constitute some of the most rigorous comparative Buddhist philosophy in the Usenet archive. This essay demonstrates Tang Huyen's gift for dialectical reversal: the charge of "fluff" becomes, in his hands, a description of the Perfection of Wisdom itself. The observation that the awakened person is "trackless and traceless" — in the Canon — and can therefore deny what he says and does in good conscience, is a characteristically precise citation of canonical precedent for what looks like evasion.

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

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