by Tang Huyen

In September 2006, the philosopher Tang Huyen posted to talk.religion.buddhism, alt.zen, and alt.philosophy.zen a response to a self-described "self-indulgent ramble" on Buddhism, Daoism, and Miyamoto Musashi by another poster. What emerged was something else entirely: a lucid account of why the dissolution of self is not defeat but completion, not passivity but the precondition for total action.

Tang Huyen draws on Dogen's "total action," Anaxagoras's description of a God who acts as a whole, Kant's Third Critique on the harmony of faculties, and Fénelon's pure love — the annihilation of self-interest as the condition for immensity. He anchors the argument in the Parable of the Saw (MN I.129), where the Buddha instructs monks to maintain friendliness even toward those who carve them limb from limb, and illustrates it with a Chinese martial arts story about magnanimous self-sacrifice. The post is a sustained meditation on what it means to act from nothing — and why that is the deepest kind of strength.

The self displays itself in the most obvious form as the internal narration that leans thick and heavy on self-justification and self-validation, that defends and protects itself (often against itself more than against external factors, like other people or external events), that makes itself look good by distorting reality (including its own reality) to its own purpose.

The understanding of the absence of self goes through the understanding of self, of what it is (even if it is only fictitious, made up, composed, unreal and untrue), the patient and laborious untangling of it, learning it and unlearning it, undoing it, reworking a new set of patterns to replace it that will not cause suffering.

There is no magic formula. It takes work. The swamp stuff has to be faced up with and dealt with. The disconnected and denied parts have to be reconnected and reconciled with. The awakened acts in non-action, from the absence of self, but that non-action is also total action that involves the whole of his or her being, not a mere part, and not a mere part that has to fight the other parts, and that total action harnesses his or her complete and whole energies into one piece. That integration is not possible with the self around, but is not arrived at easily and quickly. The self is what fragments one's energies and action, and the pulling together of oneself in the end entails the doing away with the self, but the pulling together of oneself also entails first of all the pulling together of one's self, however illusory it is. After pulling it together, one then can let go of it — one wraps oneself into a ball and drops it or lets it fall by itself. But such letting go presupposes quite some concentration (samatha) and transparency (vipassana), which are not possible in the normal scattered state.

A wonderful intermediate stage is the coming to peace with oneself and the reconciliation with oneself, so that one becomes settled with oneself. It is from there, as a position of strength, that the self can be dropped, and not when one is fighting oneself, even less when one is falling apart.

Anaxagoras, if memory serves, says that God acts as a whole, feels as a whole, moves as a whole. The idea is that somebody perfect like God is whole and not fragmented, and feels as a whole (and not in bits and pieces), acts as a whole (and not in bits and pieces), moves as a whole (and not in bits and pieces). Such a person is unitary, and his motivation and action are unitary (and not fragmented, not disjoint, not contrary).

Dogen talks about "total action," and again the idea is the same. One moves as a unit, not as loose fragments moving in different directions, working at cross-purposes. One perceives at one go, one acts at one go. The long and arduous Chan training, just as the long and arduous Buddhist training in general, aims at harnessing all the resources of the cultivator and gathering them together, streamlining them, harmonising them, and so long as there is a self there, it messes the show and doesn't allow for peace and harmony. When the self has been abdicated, then paradoxically all resources can be unified and made as one. One then acts as a single piece, though there is no one there to act. This is non-acting, non-doing, non-willing, non-mentating. Total innocence, then.

Kant often in the third Critique talks of the faculties getting into harmony with one another, giving rise to the feeling of pleasure. Liberation is in that direction, but brought out all the way (the pleasure is here Nirvana), so that not only are the faculties in harmony with one another, but also the whole mind as such is in total harmony with itself. Such a mind is invisible to others, because it doesn't stop at anything or stand on anything.

This is how action becomes total action, not divided or fragmentary action, for one now acts as a whole, and when the mind is in full harmony with itself, it doesn't create a self as a linking pin to hang itself around (for such a self would block the harmony), so total action is at the same time non-action, as there is no self around to act the action.

There is total convergence, but it is convergence around nothing. There is (or not) only action happening (or not happening), but nobody doing anything.

The Parable of the Saw

In naked survival terms such a person, moving as a single unit and acting as a single unit, should be just creating a better weapon for defeating his enemies. Yet even as he moves as a single unit and acts as a single unit, there is no one there to move or to act, therefore there is no thought or intention of survival, no impulse or incentive toward self-preservation. If anything, the well-being and survival of his tormenters or killers are paradoxically preferred to his own.

To put things into perspective:

"Monks, as low-down thieves might carve one limb from limb with a double-handed saw, yet even then whoever sets his mind at enmity, he, for this reason, is not a doer of my teaching. Herein, you should train yourselves thus: 'Neither will our minds become perverted, nor will we utter an evil speech, but kindly and compassionately will we dwell, with a mind of friendliness (metta-citta), void of hatred; and, beginning with him, we will dwell having suffused the whole world with a mind of friendliness that is far-reaching, widespread, immeasureable, without enmity, without malevolence.' This is how you must train yourselves, monks." — MN I.129 (21), tr. in MLS I.165-166, MA 30, 465a–466c, 193, 746a, Maha-vibhasa T 27, 1545, 190a–b.

This sutta is called "The Parable of the Saw."

The Monk Who Chose to Die

A story from a famous modern Chinese martial arts novel: there was a prominent monk (his name is "He who Sees Emptiness") in Shao-lin Monastery who had successfully cultivated the Diamond Indestructible Body, so that nobody could harm him, and whoever wanted to harm him bodily would have that violence returned automatically and be harmed by it in kind and in degree. He was also famous for his magnanimity and compassion.

One day a thug wanted to kill him, came to him, engaged him in small talk, waited for him to soften up, then struck him, and he, never losing his smiling countenance, forgave the thug and died peacefully and in dignity, as was expected of him.

Later on the thug proudly recounted the story to his fellow thugs, who of course asked him: "He was protected by the Diamond Indestructible Body, so how could you kill him, much less get off scot free?" He replied: "He was magnanimous and compassionate, knew that I was going to attack him, intentionally deactivated his Diamond Indestructible Body, so that I could strike him and get off scot free whilst he died, otherwise how could I survive and live to this day?"

Fénelon and the Immensity

In Fénelon one annihilates oneself for God's sake, one loves God for God's sake and without any self-interest on one's part, and one pursues that immensity with utter abandon, so that in the end, there is no limit and no boundary, period. What this entails is that there is nothing and no object that can be referred to, including oneself and God, but just the contemplation, because, a contrario, if there was anything that could be referred to, inside or outside the contemplation, it would set limit and boundary to the contemplation, from inside or outside (such as God set up against the contemplation), and the immensity would be broken because limited and bounded. It has to have no demarcation, delimitation, delineation, inner or outer, otherwise it would not be the immensity of God's love.

In such a state, one gives way to what happens, without obstruction and resistance, especially any obstruction and resistance that comes from self-interest. This is understood in an absolutistic sense, right up to torture and death, inclusively. One can conquer the world, but what good is that if one can't lose oneself?

This is in direct contradiction to the modern post-industrial spirit, especially in the USA, where one has to be intent and aggressive (in selling oneself) to be successful. CEOs ooze out ego from all over, and if they didn't they would not be selected to be CEOs. The Old One (Lao-zi) is against intellect, learning, social advancement (the rat race, keeping up with the Jones), meritocracy, social distinction, all of which having been exacerbated in the modern society. He is for non-doing (wu-wei), which exactly translates Buddhist an-abhisamskara as a definition of Nirvana. He is incredibly prescient. Reading him is like reading a critique of modern society.

Colophon

Originally posted to alt.philosophy.zen, alt.zen, and talk.religion.buddhism by Tang Huyen, September 16, 2006. 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 synthesises Dogen's "total action," Anaxagoras's unitary deity, Kant's Third Critique, Fénelon's pure love, and the Parable of the Saw (MN I.129) into a unified account of liberation as the precondition — not the negation — of wholehearted action. The Chinese martial arts story of the Diamond Indestructible monk is a rare specimen of practitioner narrative that makes the argument vivid.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

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