by Tang Huyen

The universe will sing its song to you unasked.

The point about Buddhist cultivation is that delusion is the
induction from the logical-ideal to the real, the imposition of
the a priori on the a posteriori, and that awakening is the
stopping of that and the freeing of the real from the logical-ideal,
of the a posteriori from the a priori. So in Buddhist cultivation
one tries one's best to let whatever happens happen, without
interference from one. One effaces oneself from what happens
in favour of what happens so that what happens can happen
freely on its own side, without any constraint from one.
Basically, awakening is just this removal of the constraints
imposed on what happens.

Classically, this is absence of action, absence of deed. Deed
(karman) is based on the same stem as the compositions
(saṃskāra), the fourth aggregate — both are involved with
doing or acting — and in awakening the fourth aggregate is
quiesced and held in abeyance, so that there is no deed or
action that proceeds. The Buddha defines Nirvāṇa as the
complete calming of the compositions (sabba-saṅkhāra-samatho),
the absence of composing (a-abhi-saṅkhāra), and the absence
of willing-mentating (an-abhi-sañcetayita).

I don't claim to be awakened, but in the moments where I can
quiesce my mentation to some extent or another, what happens
is wonderful and doesn't make sense. That is, it doesn't make
sense from the normal point of view of thought, language and
logic — which are inoperative then, relatively — but within
itself it glows with coherence, harmony, rightness, justice. The
whole universe is redeemed in its own rightness, from its own
side. I don't impose any a priori on it, but simply let it shine
forth on its own side. What it comes closest to is moral-aesthetic
contemplation without a self around. The world is left to justify
and validate itself from its own side, in all its glory.

It is not a thought, a concept, but a feeling, a sensation. You
can ask how a feeling or sensation shorn of thought, language
and logic can have coherence, harmony, rightness, justice in it;
that's true, but afterward the sensation can be analysed that
way. Chinese Buddhism and Chinese Chan talk about "wonderful
existence" (miao-you 妙有), and probably it is in that direction,
though I don't claim to have attained to the end.

Many mystics of various religions talk about giving up their will
to God, and of loving God purely for his own sake and without
any thought of self-interest on their own side — that's pure
love. I suspect that they are talking about the same thing,
though there may be different degrees of surrendering. Total
surrendering would be Buddhist awakening, in which case it
would be surrendering to what happens — in the impersonal —
rather than to God or the like — in the personal. It would be
non-action. It takes deed or act to create a self, and in the
absence of deed or act there is no self.

The trick is to be present to what happens, but to be present in
such a way that there is no self around. Again it doesn't make
sense, but we're stretching beyond sense here, leaving sense
behind, and just taking what comes, regardless whether it makes
sense or not. The Buddhist transcendent is transcendent to
thought, language, logic and sense, and you have to check the
latter at the gate of the former. Some people call it transrational.
That's the price of admittance, and thank heaven it's cheap. All
you have to pay is to let go — surely of thought, language, logic
and sense. And no, you haven't to be dumb and believe in
irrational stuff, but just to open up yourself without
preconceptions to what happens.

So calm yourself, let go, drop all cares and concerns, surrender
to what happens, refrain from imposing your baskets and cages
on it — such an imposition is an act, and an act of self, and
we're talking about absence of act, absence of self here — drop
thought, language, logic, sense and their constraints, just flow
along with what happens, and what happens will redeem itself
and you in due course, all for free.

Remember, it is a matter of being placid, not ardent; relaxed,
not pressured; gentle, not pushy; easy, not urgent. It is a matter
of not-doing, not a matter of doing, of unlearning, not of learning.
The universe will sing its song to you unasked.

Tang Huyen

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on June 7, 2005, in reply to George Cherry on the thread "old gotama's most profound teaching in i thoughtness." Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

George Cherry had acknowledged Tang Huyen's earlier description of quiesced mentation as something he himself had experienced — "wonderful and doesn't make sense" — and offered warmth and solidarity ("To hell with logic"). This post is Tang Huyen's most sustained philosophical account of that experience. The a priori / a posteriori vocabulary, borrowed from Kant, is characteristically repurposed: delusion is not merely cognitive error but the act of forcing the real into the logical-ideal — samskāra as the fourth aggregate, the compositions, the doing-engine. The Pāli canonical definition of Nirvāṇa (sabba-saṅkhāra-samatho — the complete calming of the compositions) grounds the claim in earliest-accessible sources. The cross-traditional convergence with mystical surrender to God is tentative and deliberate: "I suspect that they are talking about the same thing, though there may be different degrees of surrendering." The closing instruction is the most gentle in the corpus: placid, not ardent; relaxed, not pressured; the universe sings unasked. The Pāli equivalents (saṃskāra, saṅkhāra, sañcetayita) and the Chinese miao-you 妙有 are Tang Huyen's standard cross-traditional anchors.

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

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