by Tang Huyen

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

In life, one often has to act according to contrary values or
sets of values, but if so one should be aware of doing so, of
flip-flopping between contrary values or sets of values,
depending on circumstances.

There are two values or sets of values that clearly contradict
each other, so that one can choose them serially but not
simultaneously. And one can well choose one of the two for
one's entire life and never touch the other one.

One value or set of value is detached, disinterested
contemplation of the world just the way it is, not the way we
wish it to be or how we would bend it to be. This approach
leaves the world untouched, but only passively contemplates
it such as it is, in its suchness.

The other value or set of value is on the contrary active
intervention, by way of imposing one's values on it to change
it to fit one's values, be they kindness or compassion or some
such moral-aesthetic tendencies. One clearly manipulates the
world the way one likes, to adapt the world to the way one
likes. One indisputably bends the world the way one likes it
to be and doesn't leave it to be whatever way it is on its own
side.

We have some of the classic dualities here: active versus
passive, detached versus engaged, contemplation versus
intervention, artificialism versus non-artificialism, etc.

It is perfectly conceivable — and many people have argued
accordingly — to contemplate the world just the way it is, to
perceive other people in distress and crying for help and not
do anything to help them, because one is only passively
contemplating the world just the way it is, not the way one
wishes it to be or the way one thinks it to be. This approach
often takes the world as perfect and just as it is, compleat in
itself and needing no intervention one way or another to make
it better than it already is, because it is already perfect and
just.

Others will object to that detached, disinterested contemplation
as callous and cruel, and prefer active intervention, the way
they wish the world to be and how they would bend it to be,
for example with less suffering and more happiness. Others will
object to this approach that it may or may not know what is
good and what is bad for the world. Communism is a prominent
example, which started out as a humanitarian revolt and ends
up being easily the single bloodiest episode of world history.
Getting indignant and self-righteous about the world and
working to change it to make it fit one's moral-aesthetic
proclictivities may end up being counter-productive — may end
up producing the exact contrary to what one innocently and in
good intention wants to bring about. The road to hell is paved
with good intentions.

One can adopt the two said strategies serially, one after the
other, but not simultaneously. At some time and on some
occasions, one can opt to engage and work for what one takes
to be the betterment of the world, though one really has no idea
whether it is really for the betterment of the world or not,
because it would take omni-science to know that — one bit at a
time. At other times and in other occasions, one can opt to
disengage from any intervention in the world and merely
contemplate it passively, in detached, disinterested
contemplation, just the way it is and not the way one wishes it
to be. In the latter case one refrains from imposing one's values
on the world, or one's value is not to intervene in the world but
to leave it untouched, just the way it is, and contemplate it
accordingly.

One can flexibly switch between the two, or one can well
choose one of the two for one's entire life and never touch the
other one. It may be due to ripe moral-aesthetic consideration
that one explicitly refrains from intervening in the world at all,
because one doesn't know what good or what bad will come out
of one's intervention, at whatever scale — look at Communism.
In doing so, one simply acts, or refrains from acting.

When it is said that "the sharing is part of what is, and part of
the perfection", it may be so, or it may be just one's bias. Some
people can reject such sharing completely, on moral-aesthetic
considerations that are as valid as any other.

Tang Huyen

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on April 20, 2005, in reply to David Chess ([email protected]) on the thread "How To Tell A Buddhist." Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

The previous day, Tang Huyen had identified a contradiction in a popular Zen teacher's definition of being Buddhist: pure receptive contemplation (letting the rain fall on just and unjust alike) and active compassionate intervention (sharing one's umbrella) cannot be held simultaneously. David Chess objected that the two are compatible — sharing is simply "part of what is." Tang Huyen's reply here develops the argument into a full philosophical taxonomy: the two orientations are genuinely incompatible values-sets that may only be adopted serially. The Communism example is not rhetorical decoration but substantive: humanitarian good intentions systematically produce their opposite when they intervene in systems they do not understand. The post closes on a note of deliberate ethical openness — non-intervention can itself be the riper moral-aesthetic position.

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

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