It seems like the author may have fallen into the common trap of the nonexistence of self, which can lead to feelings of nihilism. When I first encountered medi

It seems like the author may have fallen into the common trap of the nonexistence of self, which can lead to feelings of nihilism. When I first encountered meditation as a teenager I also wandered into this trap and subsequently stopped a daily meditation practice for maybe 10 years. Buddhist teaching is very explicitly not nihilistic though. In the Prajnaparamita literature of Mahayana Buddhism the teaching is the emptiness of self and all phenomena, not the nonexistence of self and phenomena. There is a difference. Thich Nhat Hanh’s translation of the Heart Sutra explains it very clearly, and he argues that a lot of the confusion comes from an unskillful translation of the sutra. I’d recommend it to anyone that might be struggling with feelings of nihilism in their practice and is working from the wrong understanding of there being no self. Edit: I realized there are a couple publications of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Heart Sutra, but the one I’m specifically referencing is published under the title The Other Shore. I’d suggest getting a copy of the book in order to get the full commentary, but the sutra and some motivation for it looks to be on his website: https://plumvillage.org/news/thich-nhat-hanh-new-heart-sutra-translation/ https://plumvillage.org/news/thich-nhat-hanh-new-heart-sutra...