by Tang Huyen

Instead of using Buddhism to reduce and ultimately do
away with their self, they turn it upside down and use
it to strengthen and aggrandise their self, perhaps to
cosmic dimensions, even as they claim to have no self
left.

Buddhist awakening and the ending of suffering
are attained, not by any kind of induction from
the logical-ideal to the real, but by the stopping
of the induction from the logical-ideal to the real
and letting the real be the real without molesting
it with the logical-ideal.

They are attained by perceiving what happens as
it is, not as one wants it to be or thinks it to be
(and to bend it the way one wants it to be or thinks
it to be is to induce from the logical-ideal to the
real, precisely).

Some people preach that Buddhism teaches one
just to be oneself and not to force oneself into
something or somebody else, yet they are too
ashamed of themselves as they are and have to
force themselves (or rather, their self-image, the
image of their self) into something else, which
happens to be their ideal, such as non-mentation
or no-self or some such.

So instead of practising in order to attain to their
ideal, such as non-mentation or no-self or some
such, they summarily declare that they have
already attained to the ideal, that they embody the
ideal to perfection.

The problem is that their behaviour doesn't follow
suit, in fact it is rather at antipodes with that of
awakened people.

Awakened people don't defend and protect
themselves, for they have no self to defend and
protect. At a less abstract level, they are at peace
and in harmony with themselves and see no need
to defend and protect themselves, especially with
regard to mere words on the screen.

These people are on the contrary edgy, jumpy,
touchy, reactive, explosive, and this, on a frequent
basis, which clearly gives the lie to their claims of
attainment.

What tops it all off is their use of awakening as a
means to justify their behaviour. They use
awakening as a universal shield behind which they
hide themselves and their sometimes shameful
actions.

They combine what in Christianity would be called
presumption with using Buddhism as an excuse for
their behaviour. Instead of serving Buddhism, they
use Buddhism to their own purpose — defending
and protecting their ego against its (obvious and
plentiful) failure. Instead of using Buddhism to
reduce and ultimately do away with their self, they
turn it upside down and use it to strengthen and
aggrandise their self, perhaps to cosmic dimensions,
even as they claim to have no self left.

They can fool themselves into believing their own
lie, but their suffering is all too obvious. Truth has
a way of coming back to them regardless of their
lie.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on March 6, 2005, as an unsolicited standalone essay. Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

The post stands alone — no quotations, no interlocutor — and represents Tang Huyen's most direct statement of the criterion of awakening. The argument has two parts. First, a philosophical definition: awakening is the cessation of "induction from the logical-ideal to the real," i.e., the cessation of imposing conceptual templates on raw experience. Second, a diagnostic observation: those who claim awakening while remaining reactive, defensive, and "at antipodes" with awakened behaviour have inverted the practice — using Buddhism not to dissolve the self but to armour and inflate it. Tang Huyen borrows the Christian theological category of "presumption" (claiming divine grace one has not merited) and maps it onto the Buddhist context with precision. The final line — "Truth has a way of coming back to them regardless of their lie" — has the quality of a pronouncement.

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

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