by Tang Huyen, with Tyree Hilkert

In December 2004, Tang Huyen posted to talk.religion.buddhism in response to someone accusing a poster of trolling. Tang Huyen's reply was characteristically inverted: the troll and the Buddhist teacher are functionally identical. He appended a 1999 post by Tyree Hilkert from alt.religion.buddhism.tibetan that develops the same argument from the angle of Vajrayana and psychoanalytic transference.

It seems to me that a Buddhist teacher who by definition wants to help others wake up from their delusions (or, at a lesser level of probing, a psychotherapist) will do exactly what Rob describes here.

The teacher or therapist acts as an empty mirror, to provoke the student or patient to have no grasp on him and therefore to project on him (because of the lack of information on him). He causes annoyance, because he dispenses no information about himself or engages in no actual discussions that can let him inadvertently slip some information through about himself.

He only offers vague grunts (the teacher can scream abuse or hit, say, with a stick) to spur the student or patient along on the road to self-discovery. When directly engaged with questions or comments, they deflect or attack (again, the intention is to frustrate the student or patient to provoke him to come out more in the open about himself so that he can get to know himself, with the teacher or therapist serving only as an enabler, a blank, reflecting mirror sitting on the side and not injecting any information about himself).

Of course, the Buddhist teacher wants his students to rediscover for themselves the Buddha's truth, namely that they have no self. But on the way, they will get to know themselves before getting over themselves and dropping themselves, their self.

So, somebody who acts as a troll can actually serve as a Buddhist teacher and for cheap — he reveals people to themselves, charging no fee for it.

The following post by Tyree Hilkert offers some glimpse into the above process.

Appendix: Tyree Hilkert on Vajrayana and Psychoanalysis

Originally posted to alt.religion.buddhism.tibetan by Tyree Hilkert, July 12, 1999.

Let's compare the process of Vajrayana with the process of psychoanalysis, with which it shares quite a deal, I think. The analyst maintains analytic incognito — he remains quiet, usually sits out of sight, says as little as possible, and reveals nothing about himself. He provides evenly suspended attention to whatever arises. This maximizes the analysand's projections onto the analyst (and frustrates the hell out of him). In contrast, the analysand is expected to reveal everything about himself — saying whatever pops into his mind.

Isn't it an interesting coincidence that lamas create that same sort of incognito? Isn't it an interesting coincidence that the ngondro practitioner free associates during offering and confession?

You can't begin analysis as the analyst's equal. You need to get into the process, indulge in the transference and projection, actually work through the process, and emerge on the other side.

You can't begin vajrayana as the guru's equal. You also need to work through transference and projection. This does not mean that you take on the form of devotion derived from the Indian caste system — a bunch of highly stylized self-abasement. Devotion means that you actually think the teacher has something you don't... something he can give you. And you work through the process of trying to get it until you are exhausted from trying and you notice that you've been projecting the whole thing all along! (The elephant has been at home the whole time!)

What's so beautiful about the ngondro is that this realization is presaged every practice session! At the end, the lama dissolves into light and the light dissolves into you. It's been your projection the entire time. Behold intrinsic awareness, the original face of the true lama!

I caught myself projecting onto my own lama big time last summer. It wasn't the dreamy light show presaged in the ngondro. It made me feel angry and nauseated and ashamed, personally. I'm still digesting it.

What was really sad was I realized that I don't know my lama at all. Nor will I. He doesn't really want me to know him, anymore than an analyst wants to be known by his analysand. He holds me at arms length and watches, albeit with great patience and compassion and no expectations, as I project onto him. It's infuriating.

Colophon

Tang Huyen's portion originally posted to talk.religion.buddhism, December 27, 2004. Message-ID: <[email protected]>. Tyree Hilkert's appendix originally posted to alt.religion.buddhism.tibetan, July 12, 1999.

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 pairing — Tang Huyen's structural argument that the troll and the teacher are one, and Hilkert's lived account of projection in the Vajrayana transmission — is rare documentary evidence of the Usenet community thinking through the deepest questions of pedagogy in real time. Tang Huyen's choice to append Hilkert's post marks it as a companion piece he valued.

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

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