by Tang Huyen

It is not the matter, it is the manner. And the manner is universal and suffers no exception: one drops what one experiences and does not identify with it. That is the only difference between awakening and delusion.

Buddhism does not believe in God, though God can
be loosely said to be the domain of awakening (the
domain of the Buddha) and delusion is its contrasting
domain (the domain of Māra). Awakening begins where
the self ceases, and the self is the domain of delusion.
And the domain of delusion is the domain of thought,
whereas the domain of awakening is where thought
ceases and therefore does not create a self.

I often quote SN, IV, 202 (35, 207), SA, 1168, 312a–b,
where the "I am" (asmiti) is declared to be a thought
or a mentation (maññita), and the Buddha adds:
"mentating (maññamāna, Skt. manyamāna) is to be
bound by the Evil One (marassa baddho), not mentating
(amaññamāna, Skt. amanyamāna) is to be released from
the Evil One (mutto papimato)." This sentence is
repeated at SA, 21, 4c, SN, III, 74–75 (22, 64), where it
is expanded on as: "Mentating form (rūpaṃ maññamāno)
[and the other aggregates] is to be bound by the Evil
One, not mentating (amaññamāna, here not mentating is
absolute as the aggregates are not mentioned) is to be
released from the Evil One."

Later in the Great Vehicle, the Scripture on the Meeting
of Father and Son (Pita-putra-samagama-sūtra) from the
Śikṣā-samuccaya, 251 clones the Buddha's words:
"Great king, thinking is the name of the domain of the
Evil One, non-thinking the Buddha's (manyāna ca nāma
mahārāja Māra-gocaraḥ, a-manyāna buddha-gocaraḥ)";
so does the Descent into Ceylon (Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra, ed.
Vaidya, 72): "As far as the effervescence of mind
extends, so far extends the domain of the world (yāvad
mano-vispanditam ... tāval lokāyatam)."

Thus, desire and its products, like mentation and the self,
are the domain of Māra, and one escapes it and attains
the domain of Buddha by relinquishing desire and its
products, like mentation and the self, which includes the
thought "I am," the root of all delusion.

This process of liberation occurs in situ, and the one and
self-same world of daily life is the theater of it just as it
is that of delusion and bondage. There is no other place,
no other world.

Or perhaps more cautiously: no other place, no other
world would be of concern to one who wants to end
suffering, for suffering is ended in the here and now,
and were there other places, other worlds, they would
be outside of one's purview, beyond one's scope. One
would drop attachment to them just as one drops
attachment to what one actually experiences, and it
is only this last that is of concern to one.

In Buddhism, it is not the content that matters, it is the
way one takes that content. It is not the matter, it is
the manner. And the manner is universal and suffers
no exception: one drops what one experiences and
does not identify with it. That is the only difference
between awakening and delusion.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on December 20, 2004, in reply to naked_ape's question: "If you and God are a single entity, where does God begin and you end?" Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

The post is a compact statement of Tang Huyen's central thesis. The equation thinking = Māra, not-thinking = Buddha is documented across four canonical sources: SN IV, 202 (35, 207) and its Chinese parallel SA 1168, 312a–b; SA 21, 4c and SN III, 74–75 (22, 64) for the expanded formulation across all five aggregates; Pita-putra-samagama-sūtra (Śikṣā-samuccaya 251) for the Great Vehicle version; and Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra (ed. Vaidya, 72) for the cosmological corollary. The closing formulation — "not the matter, but the manner" — is one of Tang Huyen's most condensed expressions of Buddhist soteriology: liberation is not a different content of experience but a different relationship to the same content.

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

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