nevvermind

You're using "ego" with that "vanity" sense. I'm referring to ego as in "self". I agree that strong people have less "ego", less "self-importance". Try wiping out "your self" instead and see those strong people crumble.

I don't know much Zen, but after the "Zenish" comments in here, I guess lots of HN-ers do, right?

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 are too many "this makes me feel old" in here. And in SO, for that matter. You snob folks...