by Tang Huyen

Buddhism takes the Stoic doctrine and makes it about the discursive mind: we receive the whole in sensation, but divide it by our concepts and categories in order to process it to the scale of our limited mind — that is delusion; when we stop such division and leave the whole undivided and unprocessed, just the same is awakening.

Stoicism distinguishes matter and God, the latter being the reason (logos) that forms and informs the former. Hegel takes his holism straight from Stoicism, without saying so, and Stoicism is the retro, original form of holism, in which no part is real apart from the whole, and the only whole is the whole universe, which is God manifested. The true self of any part is the whole, and any part goes back to its original state (before the fall) by dropping its separate status and merging into the whole. It thus finds its redemption.

Buddhism takes that doctrine, which is about things (de re), and makes it about the discursive mind (de intellectu): we receive the whole in sensation, but divide it by our concepts and categories, frameworks and structures, in order to process it to the scale of our limited mind, and that is delusion; but when we stop such division and processing and leave the whole undivided and unprocessed, just the same is awakening.

Delusion and awakening, Samsara and Nirvana are two aspects of the same — here it should not be called "whole" or anything else, because it is before division and processing — not two realities, or one reality and one unreality.

SN, IV, 202 (35, 207); SA, 1168, 312a–b: 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 pāpimato)."

This sentence is repeated at SA, 21, 4c; SN, III, 74–75 (22, 64), where it is expanded: "Mentating form (rūpaṃ maññamāno) [and the other aggregates] is to be bound by the Evil One; not mentating (here absolute, as the aggregates are not mentioned) is to be released from the Evil One."

The Pita-putra-samāgama-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 (mañyanā ca nāma mahārāja māra-gocaraḥ, a-mañyanā buddha-gocaraḥ)." The Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra (ed. Vaidya, 72) confirms: "As far as the effervescence of mind extends, so far extends the domain of the world (yāvad mano-vispanditaṃ, tāval lokāyataṃ)."

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on May 30, 2004. Author: Tang Huyen (Laughing Buddha, Inc.). Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

Tang Huyen was a scholar of Buddhist studies with deep command of Pāli, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan sources. Posting to talk.religion.buddhism and related groups from 2003 to 2008, he was among the most rigorous analytical voices in the English-language Buddhist Usenet world. This short post makes a precise philosophical distinction that most comparative religion misses: Stoic/Hegelian holism operates at the level of things (the universe as whole, parts finding redemption in merging back); Buddhist holism operates at the level of the discursive mind (sensation is already whole, mentation divides it). Delusion and awakening are therefore not two realities but two modes of the same undivided continuum.

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

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