by Tang Huyen
"Without effortlessness, Buddhism in general and Chan in particular would be wholly worthless."
It is true that in Buddhism, you can try effortlessness right off and stay with it all the way, or begin with effortfulness and gradually ease over to effortlessness, but the end is surely effortlessness. Buddhism agrees with Daoism that the end is non-doing (an-abhisaṃskāra, wu-wei), and whether effort has been involved during the path or not, the end will be effortlessness.
A severe case of mistaking the means for the end occurs in D. T. Suzuki's Essays in Zen Buddhism, volume II, in which he asserts that Zen has nothing to do with quietistic rest. His understanding of Zen is from the Japanese Rinzai sect, but even then the whole Chan tradition of China is heavily imbued with Daoism and the non-doing of Daoism, and it is scarcely possible to read anything in Chinese Chan without picking up effortlessness from all over, regardless whether the method (dharma) that is taught as means involves effort or not. Indeed, without effortlessness, Buddhism in general and Chan in particular would be wholly worthless.
Effortlessness was what the Buddha engaged in that night to awake, and any effort, if engaged in, is only aimed at eventual effortlessness. Without that final effortlessness, any effort at all would be wholly useless, and one might as well give up Buddhism and do something else.
Aristotle says that work is for the sake of leisure, war is for the sake of peace. Who would want work for the sake of work, war for the sake of war? Who would want to exert effort all the time?
Colophon
Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on 17 October 2008, in the "Canned unwisdom" thread. Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.
This is a clear statement of TH's recurring claim that Buddhist practice ends in effortlessness. The argument works on several levels. Soteriologically: the end of Buddhist paths, in this reading, is an-abhisaṃskāra (non-fabrication, non-doing). Historically: he argues that Suzuki's rejection of quietism misrepresents the broader Chinese Chan tradition, which absorbed Daoist wu-wei deeply. And logically: effort is justified as a means to its own abandonment. The Aristotle analogy seals it: no one wants war for war's own sake; no one should want effort for effort's own sake. For TH, the Buddha's night is the proof: the six years of penance were not the awakening; the relaxation that followed them was.
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Works Library, 2026.