I am nothing

Reminds me of this:

Reb Zusha was laying on his deathbed surrounded by his disciples. He was crying and no one could comfort him. One student asked his Rebbe, "Why do you cry? You were almost as wise as Moses and as kind as Abraham." Reb Zusha answered, "When I pass from this world and appear before the Heavenly Tribunal, they won't ask me, 'Zusha, why weren't you as wise as Moses or as kind as Abraham,' rather, they will ask me, 'Zusha, why weren't you Zusha?' Why didn't I fulfill my potential, why didn't I follow the path that could have been mine."

That's when you realize you know nothing, that even after these years of training and experience, you feel even less knowledgeable about the art than when you began. Depressed about your progress, you figure you have two options to deal with it: 1) quit... or 2) keep showing up. But by now, you love it too much and its become apart of your life, so quitting isn't an option. All that's left to do then is to continue showing up.

Eventually, the ego is beaten out of you from every failure/loss/disappointment in your daily training. You've tapped out to newer people, younger people, smaller/bigger/"dumber" people that it doesn't even shock you to perform poorly against a total beginner. From here, self-realization naturally guides you into a more focused path for self-improvement. What you want to achieve today is far different from what you thought you'd wanted out of martial arts in the beginning. Telling apart someone who thinks they "know", and someone who truly "knows", is far easier. You'll realize how little you know, as it will humble you. But hopefully you'll come to peace with who you are, and realize what it takes to be where you want to be.

'Can we look at our lives in such a way? Can we look at all of the aspects of our lives with this mind, just open to see what there is to see? I don't know about you, but I have a hard time doing that. I have a lot of habits of mind—I think most of us do. Children begin to lose that innocent quality after a while, and soon they want to be "the one who knows." We all want to be the one who knows. But if we decide we "know" something, we are not open to other possibilities anymore. And that's a shame. We lose something very vital in our life when it's more important to us to be "one who knows" than it is to be awake to what's happening. We get disappointed because we expect one thing, and it doesn't happen quite like that. Or we think something ought to be like this, and it turns out different. Instead of saying, "Oh, isn't that interesting," we say, "Yuck, not what I thought it would be." Pity. The very nature of beginner's mind is not knowing in a certain way, not being an expert. As Suzuki Roshi said in the prologue to Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's there are few." As an expert, you've already got it figured out, so you don't need to pay attention to what's happening. Pity.'

Lord Henry stroked his pointed brown beard and tapped the toe of his patent-leather boot with a tasselled ebony cane. "How English you are Basil! That is the second time you have made that observation. If one puts forward an idea to a true Englishman -- always a rash thing to do -- he never dreams of considering whether the idea is right or wrong. The only thing he considers of any importance is whether one believes it oneself. Now, the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices. However, I don't propose to discuss politics, sociology, or metaphysics with you. I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world. Tell me more about Mr. Dorian Gray. How often do you see him?"

I guess one problem with discarding your identity as a father is that you are also questioning responsibilities that are vital to your children. Another problem of going without identity is that having a sense of belonging to some community becomes more difficult. That's something I have been missing personally.

If people can't think clearly about anything that has become part of their identity, then all other things being equal, the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible.

http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

In a similar vein, from David Foster Wallace's 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College:

"If you worship money and things -- if they are where you tap real meaning in life -- then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.... Worship power -- you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart -- you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178211966454607.html

suffering = your self image vs perception of reality self

The argument goes that man is a prisoner of his self image. This self image is a mixture of his desires, wants, tastes, hopes, fears.... This can be seen as a self image that arises out of conditioning by the society and self. You are like a frog in the well and imagine the well to be the universe. You are limited and shaped by the well. How can one know of what the possibilities are unless they ascend from their own intellectual/egotistical/scoietal wells or the well of self image?

On the other hand, I have noticed that rejection of natural tendencies leads to suffering as well. No matter how hard we try the self will never be a blank tape. When you reject the self image your self image becomes "Im he/she who rejects self image imposed on me". So now you are straight back where you started with a brand new self image, only this time you are more observant of your flaws(tendencies of self). So there is still suffering here.

Let me oversimplify again the frog = Neo in the matrix, Ignorance is bliss = Cipher in the matrix

This excerpt from Rumi seems apt:

  "Knock, And He'll open the door
  Vanish, And He'll make you shine like the sun
  Fall, And He'll raise you to the heavens
  Become nothing, And He'll turn you into everything."

For the longest time i worked as a consultant but i never cared. When someone said to me so what do you do, i just said i work with computers, my rank didnt matter to me, my role , my status nothing. I wouldn't come to work in a suite or tie or even a shirt (i came in just a t-shirt and jeans) and it was very weird to many who were watching. I guess cause they cared and wondered why i didnt ...

They would say , "your a consultant, for a big4 how can you wear those clothes, cause i personally cant".

I would respond by saying, well i dont care , just wanna make sure customer is happy regardless of what my official role is, that way i could do my work , not have to redo things and then go home. Also one of the important things i think is i detached myself from being a consultant, i was nothing, not a manager, a consultant, a senior consultant , who has certain things attached to them so i felt free and just wore what i wanted with the one rule that the customer needs to be happy.

When i found out that i could get away with that i experimented with a few other things too, like if i was tired during lunch i would sleep on the park bench if it was a nice sunny day. I stopped thinking hey im a professional and cant be seen sleeping on a park bench cause thats what bums do and once i got over it and i thought , hey who cares, it was easy and i would come back to the office invigorated cause of a 20-30 minute quick nap :)

However the caveat is when you CARE enough about say programming . If you start to tell yourself you dont care anymore you loose a certain desire which if you care about it, isnt very good. if you keep telling yourself hey i am a programmer then that comes with certain things such as , writing code, being half decent at math, being logical etc etc and being good at those things isnt a bad thing.

So i think i get what paul is saying when he says "i am nothing" but i think you cant apply that to things you care about cause it will cause you to not care. But applying that way of thinking to things what you might care about but deep down know its just for perception or is kinda silly or even not really important has some surprisingly good results :)

I maybe am a case of "western individuation syndrome", but for me, loosing individuation for protecting myself sounds rather like an oxymoron. Actually, when there's nothing to protect, there nothing to improve, whatever that guy says. And even if you might say that Buchheit didn't suggest to actually dissolve your personality, it very much seems like he did.

Low expectations, realism when faced with your own challenges, sane aggressiveness or indifference, confronting your own prejudices, vices and frustration, are all possible when one's brain is mentally trained, not when you're living with a general sense of "loosing yourself" or when one's dissolving one's ego.

I don't think "letting go of your identity" leads to "a better version of our selves" or "true self improvement", but to a toxic sense of not being who you are.

"But I am nothing, and so I am finally free to be myself." - if you need to be nothing in order to be free, you ARE nothing.

"By returning to zero expectations, by accepting that I am nothing, it is easier to see the truth." - what do zero expectation has to do with nothingness?

"If I were smart, I might be afraid of looking stupid." - that's not being smart, that's being westernly-smart. Change "smart" with "wise" and see if that sentence makes any sense.

Why does someone always preaches extremes to get rid of another? Now I'm being artistically literal: when you say "I am nothing", just loose the "I".

Hey, I had frustrations, I had problems and conquered must of them, partly with indifference, partly with matured ego, partly with higher self-barricades, but not once I thought of dissolving my ego. What the deuce? - I kinda need it! I was learned to fight and gain knowledge, but then I learned that, when fighting something, you actually give it meaning, so then I learned to give up. So this blog post does resonate with my experience at some extent.

Preparing for "He didn't mean to ACTUALLY renounce your personality": it's dangerous to use metaphors or ambiguous expressions when your next paragraph if a plain-life description. Just don't. Use "lower your expectations" instead of "be nothing". This is logic/biologic-ally wrong. You can't be nothing, but you can't be all of it, neither, so, in the mediocrity principle, just be something, because you already are (how's that for metaphoric?).

There is a fine line between putting yourself in a box that you (or others) create for you and knowing who you are. The classifications that Paul lists in his post are of the first kind. The second kind, you can't really change.

"[speaking about ego] We set up a background, a foundation from which we can go on and on to infinity. This is what is called samsara, the continuous vicious cycle of confirmation of existence. One confirmation needs another confirmation needs another…

The attempt to confirm our solidity is very painful. Constantly we find ourselves suddenly slipping off the edge of a floor which had appeared to extend endlessly. Then we must attempt to save ourselves from death by immediately building an extension to the floor in order to make it appear endless again. We think we are safe on our seemingly solid floor, but then we slip off again and have to build another extension. We do not realize that the whole process is unnecessary, that we do not need a floor to stand on, that we have been building all these floors on the ground level. There was never any danger of falling or need for support. In fact, our occupation of extending the floor to secure our ground is a big joke, the biggest joke of all, a cosmic joke."

[1] The chapter is fully available here: http://www3.telus.net/public/sarlo/Ytrungpa.htm.

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Freedom-Meditation-Shambhala-Libr...

I understood the core message to be we shouldn't let labels that define some aspects of who we are constrain us.

Or, in programming terms: mixins not class hierarchies :)

Favourite quote: "True self improvement requires becoming a better version of our selves, not a lesser version of someone else."

But if I am nothing what entity is contemplating my nothingness? I most definitely must be a something - thinking of myself as a non-something is necessarily a delusion. It's illogical to engage in identity denial - instead I should try to engage in identity variation, approaching myself (and others!) with a different set of assumptions from time to time (which I believe was the spirit of the original post). It's silly to start a process of self-actualization by denying the very thing I am trying to actualize.

Or, as follows: I exist as a unique locus of space and time and so do you. I can share a room, a table, a meal, a conversation, even a lifetime with you but I can't be you - I can only be myself experiencing you. Your identity is yours and yours alone and you are always free to be yourself. In fact you are required to be yourself - after all who else could you be?

I intend to own my identity for the brief flickering moment that it exists. The mindless and momentous machinations of the universe have create the fragile consciousness that I am, and very soon these same machinations will erase me to nothingness. I see no reason to get a head start on being nothing.

  I have abandoned my path.
  I have forsaken my role.
  I have forgotten my name.
  I have lost my soul.

It's on the todo list anyway.

I disagree, it starts with love.

What is good?

Having zero expectations and being humble are both noble. But being nothing is just impossible. You already are something. Goodness comes from love, Integrity comes from knowing what is good, so don't be evil, be good.

What is true?

I guess the point being made is that knowledge of the truth starts with knowing i am ignorant, like the beginner's mind, or a childlike curiosity, free of prejudices, a free mind, or to paraphrase Plato "— This man, on one hand, believes that he knows something, while not knowing [anything]. On the other hand, I - equally ignorant - do not believe [that I know anything]." [1]

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing

Proposal: Instead of expending massive amounts of energy bringing an object of such high inertia to rest, why not just change the inputs you are feeding it to gradually alter its direction? Don't focus on the cessation and extinction of the turning of mind. Focus on feeding the turning of mind solvable or aesthetically pleasurable problems, to decrease the bandwidth occupied by unsolvable\fear based problems.

tldr: I'm not convinced the epicness of ego destruction is necessary for ego transmutation, if that is one's goal.

edit: Well, I just realized my analogy does not hold for all cases. In Physics, if you want to change the direction vector of an object in motion, to the opposite of its present heading, it will require at least as much energy as bringing the object to rest. So focusing on ego destruction could be worth it depending on where you want to go and where you are now.

Additionally, we also know from Physics that all motion is relative, velocity cannot be measured without a frame of reference. I think the Buddhists would argue that cessation of the turning of thought provides this otherwise missing frame of reference, enabling the thought\ego vector to accurately be measured when the turning of thought restarts.

"Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God."

- 1 Corinthians 1:26-29 (NLT)

I think moving beyond an ego-based sense of self is the best way to think rationally and accomplish a goal. In fact, the biggest benefit is probably being able to rationally understand other people's point of view without a sense of self clouding up your interpretation. But, for me at least, it has not been pragmatic to abandon a sense of self at all times.

For instance, it is much easier for me to relate to my grandmother with a stronger sense of self - or at least project a persona that gives that appearance. You can't really like people or things (in the most basis sense) without ego. Nor, can you fully extend emotional empathy in the purist sense when you have no sense of self. With no ego there are many professional environments that will simply drain your energy - even if you have a decent persona for relating emotionally with others.

For me, the better answer has been to look at my self (more specifically my brain) as a library of different selfs. Yes, I am nothing, but I must at least be a controller that responds to my environment with the most relevant sense of self at any point in time. I would suggest there is an evolution of self beyond nothing.

On the other hand, he talks about "returning to zero expectations" and being "nothing."

I conclude that Paul wants to be a better nothing. Or possibly that he is slowly decaying. I'm not sure you can be nothing and also have a standard for getting better.

I'd encourage Paul to take the next step, and realize that not only are you nothing, what you do really doesn't matter at all (Perhaps very difficult for Paul to believe, given his accomplishments! But true anyway)

Once you realize you're nothing, and what you do in life won't really matter -- life is fundamentally and irrevocably absurd -- then you can really be free to make the most with what you have. Because just realizing you transcend labels doesn't take the existential pressure off until you realize you also transcend existence itself -- you are truly and deeply nothing. At that point, you realize that the decisions a person makes is the only thing they truly own. This is the beginning of freedom.

It all sounds a lot like existentialism 101. Good stuff!

It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything.

This mindset is good at not only helping yourself become yourself, but placing the best people in your life.

If you spend your entire life trying to please everyone you meet, decide who you should be friends with and who you shouldn't, and become a person that others will like more, you will ultimately not make friends who you would have by just being yourself. And those are the friends you want most.

Perhaps even worse, you could waste endless amounts of time on people who you think you should be friends with or have in your life, but really shouldn't. Sooner or later, the relationships with these people that you built on the foundation of some artificial idea of yourself will crumble. If you know that you are nothing, then become yourself, you will be surprised how many amazing friends you will find in your life.

Paul addresses the problems posed by over-committing to your identity. But if you do run with the title of his post and remove all identity, you don't automatically get a self that is eager to learn new shit. That is the best case scenario.

You can just as easily be the guy who knows a lot - but lacks confidence to progress because he doesn't think he is a good developer or plumber. Or you can be the guy who doesn't know much and thus doesn't have an identity.

We've all met people who know exactly who they are("i am a kickass ruby developer beyond anything else in life") and we know people who know shit load of something but continue to ponder who they really are("kickass ruby developer professionally but really what am i?"). Both, at certain extremes can be equally harmful.

I'd be willing to bet that human nature is as complicated as the system of natural numbers; perhaps we keep butting our heads into walls like this because we're trying to find answers that would violate Godel's incompleteness theorems...

  too effeminate to be straight

  too smart to be kind

In social interactions, we assume some identity to relate with those around us. Inevitably, those interactions (if we're receptive and respecting of who we interact with) will affect our own thoughts, including (sometimes) our sense of self.

No man's an island, and no man's nothing so long as he lives in a society. Saying "I am nothing" is just as bad as saying "I am X"

Δεν ελπίζω τίποτε. Δεν φοβούμαι τίποτε. Είμαι λεύτερος.

I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.

That said, awesome post.

In other words, "apple is being eaten by you just as much as you are eating the apple". It's not so much that you have chosen to eat the apple, as much as the apple chose to hit the receptors in your brain that will make you eat it. But it's all ridiculous: you and apple are one harmonious system.

So when you say that you are nothing you mean that you have many strengths, flip the ladder again, this is a circular double helix

Well known person or not, advices and weapons do not go together.

Anyone else struggling with this?

(i hope it's not "if we can be happy with who we are, then we will not mind using fixed identities"...)

In the christian world, it is called "taking yourself off the throne and putting another entity on it". The entity that gets put on it is variable, but the constant is that you are not on it.

Two things come to mind: PUA theory and having so much money that the boredom literally drives you nuts. So I'm thinking this guy may be headed for cautionary tale territory.

Anyway, rock on, faggots.