What is the difference between this approach and the classical Buddhist approach?
The classical Buddhist approach is often understood as having the ultimate goal of reaching a state of non-attachment. However, this approach argues that setting non-attachment as a goal inevitably creates a new attachment to the goal itself. Instead of pursuing non-attachment as a destination, this approach focuses entirely on a practical process: observing thoughts, identifying the underlying “stories” at work, and systematically dismantling them.
A second major difference lies in the terminology and the psychological traps that terminology creates. Classical Buddhism frequently frames its ultimate goals using words like “annihilation,” “non-existence,” “nothingness,” or “emptiness”. While both approaches agree that enlightenment is a process of removal rather than addition, this approach argues that the Buddhist terminology carries a severe risk of “reification”—the mistake of treating an abstract concept like “nothingness” as a tangible state to be achieved. “Nothingness” is not the presence of a special state; it is the absence of everything, meaning it cannot be felt or “achieved” because a person must “be something” in order to feel anything.
When seekers reify “nothingness” or “emptiness,” they mistakenly believe it is something they can “become” or attain. Consequently, these Buddhist terms often become merely a new name for the ego. Rather than dismantling their ego, the seeker simply adds a new story where they identify themselves with this “emptiness,” inflating a new “spiritual ego” while believing they are evolving.
To completely avoid this trap, this approach abandons concepts like “nothingness” and exclusively uses the term “stories”. The distinctive advantage of this approach is that a “story” is clearly an abstract mental construct that exists only in the mind and cannot possibly be reified. Because no one believes they can literally become a story, it is obvious that a story can only be removed. By focusing strictly on the removal of “stories,” this approach prevents seekers from chasing new identity states or imagining they are progressing toward an exotic destination like “emptiness”.