by Tang Huyen

From total effortfulness he switched to total effortlessness. From total resistance he switched to total non-resistance. From total blocage he switched to total flow. From total imposition he switched to total release. There was nothing else to his awakening.

Gnosis has its direct equivalent in jñāna, which denotes the insight or knowledge gained in awakening, but in Buddhism (at least in the early canon) the only liberating knowledge is the knowledge of the ending of the cankers/outflows. However, as the experience of the Buddha himself that night shows, what helped him end his suffering was not knowledge or learning, but only peace with himself. He himself defined Nirvāṇa as the calming of all the compositions (sabba-saṅkhāra-samatho), where the compositions are the fourth aggregate, which make up one half of mentation, the other half being the aggregate of ideation/notion/conception, the third aggregate.

Now let us go back to the Buddha. He was, if I get him aright, unhappy with family life, conjugal life, what in China was called home life, and did what was proper for such a feeling in India, namely leaving the home life to go forth as a wandering beggar (bhikkhu means beggar). He disinherited himself a small kingdom (actually, a small republic) to wander around begging for his living, not knowing where his next meal would come from.

He bounced around from teacher to teacher, then spent six years in exhausting, unyielding Jaina self-mortification and self-starvation, in something like control-madness, and was just days from final success, namely death by starvation, when he realised that it had been a huge error. He took milk again, regained some strength, remembered that in his youth he had entered the form meditation, so now he entered it again, in calm and peace, and at that point he had found nothing in his mind that had withstood questioning. He had strenuously chased every option known to his contemporaries in the Gangetic basin, from unrestrained self-gratification at home in his harem to self-mortification and self-starvation as a Jaina monk living in the open, to every form of meditation and speculation accessible in the Gangetic basin, and found all of them wanting.

The only option left that he had not explored was to give up control, to give up volition, to give up thought, to give up imposition (he had just spent six years in extreme imposition in Jaina self-mortification and self-starvation, during which he openly revolted against nature, his human nature in toto, and tried to beat it down across the board by sheer will), to give up accumulation (he had amassed all the worldly and presumably supra-worldly knowledge accessible in his Indian milieu), and simply to let go of all. Boom, he awoke. He became Buddha (it means awakened).

In less esoteric terms, all he left himself with was mere consciousness of what happens, without any interpretation on top of it to detract from it. He simply opened himself up to what happened, without any norm and mold to fit it into. In all his years of wandering as a homeless beggar he had never heard of such a teaching. It was so simple that he had never even thought of it on his own. Any norm and mold that one tries to fit what happens into no longer leaves what happens to be just what happens, but bends it the way of said norm and mold, imposes said norm and mold on what happens. The most severe form of such imposition was the exhausting, unyielding Jaina self-mortification and self-starvation that he had just pursued diligently for six years, but all the other forms of pursuit that he had explored involved imposition, and he had never heard or thought of absence of imposition, pure non-resistance, the leaving what happens to be just what happens (and not what one wants it to be or thinks it to be). The moment he tried it the first time, he awoke. There was no other requirement. It was so to speak the default, but nobody thought of it.

In other words, he had been a control freak and had tried to impose the strictest regimen of self-control on himself, namely the exhausting, unyielding Jaina self-mortification and self-starvation that he had just pursued diligently for six years, and all it did was wreck him. He then changed course totally, relaxed, took it easy, opened himself up (previously he closed himself down on himself), gave up all effort (previously he made the greatest effort over some years to beat himself down all the way), dropped all resistance (previously he was a ball of resistance, and what he resisted was himself), and boom, he awoke (buddha means awakened). He forsook all control (previously he reined himself in mercilessly), effaced himself (previously he made a big thing of himself as something utterly evil to be annihilated completely without remainders), and awoke. There was nothing specific that he did other than giving up all effort and dropping all resistance. There was nothing specific (like beatific visions in theistic religions) that he came to know other than the absence of effort and of resistance. That was all he took to awaken. That was all it took for him to awaken. And awakening was merely that state of absence of effort and of resistance, sans plus. He had been practising exactly the wrong way the previous six years. And he found that out by pure chance. He found in mere happenstance something that he had not known at all.

His awakening had nothing premeditated about it. It was a total surprise to him. It was wholly outside all his norms and standards, completely foreign to his mental toolbox. Nothing had prepared him for it. It was strictly in the order of happenstance, of raw happening untrammeled by human planning. And it happened because it was outside of human planning.

Which is why it is so hard to recreate it in oneself, as one is trying to recreate a total surprise to oneself. One is trying to step out of one's whole mental toolbox (in which the biggest and baddest tool is the self or "I"), yet knowing that what remains when one's mental toolbox collapses is not annihilation but redemption. The exploration is "worth it." However the finding is that there is no self in there to awaken. Awakening occurs, but it occurs to nobody. That's how it occurs, otherwise it would not be awakening.

By the way, he was lucky in that during those six years of severe penance, he ruined his body but did not ruin his mind — on the contrary, whilst "getting it wrong" by wrecking his body, he unknowingly "got it right" by pulling his mind together (not all Jaina monks were so lucky), and by the time he realised that such severe penance had been a big error, he had already done much of the Buddhist work of "wiping off the dust," and what remained to be done was mostly house-cleaning, relaxing and calming himself down all the way (which was the complete calming of the compositions). By relaxing and calming himself down all the way, he completed the course of the surrendering of thought and volition, entered non-resistance, and awoke. He cognised the peace, especially the peace with himself, but other than that he did not gain any positive knowledge, like the beatific vision or whatever. The gnosis was purely negative, in that he gave up thought and volition and entered effortlessness and non-resistance. That was his awakening.

From total effortfulness he switched to total effortlessness. From total resistance he switched to total non-resistance. From total blocage he switched to total flow. From total imposition he switched to total release. There was nothing else to his awakening. If you can do the same, you'll also awaken. There is no other requirement.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on April 7, 2008. Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

Tang Huyen was a scholar of Buddhist studies with deep command of Pāli, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan sources. Posting to talk.religion.buddhism and related groups from 2003 to 2008, he was among the most rigorous analytical voices in the English-language Buddhist Usenet world. This post delivers TH's fullest reconstruction of the mechanics of the Buddha's awakening night: the exhausted Jaina ascetic who had tried every available option, and found liberation only when all options were abandoned. The phrase "control-madness" is TH's own; the insight that awakening is a switch from total effortfulness to total effortlessness, arrived at by pure happenstance, is the governing axis of the entire post. The closing formula — "from total effortfulness to total effortlessness... there was nothing else to his awakening" — is one of TH's most crystalline distillations.

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

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