A central notion of Buddhism is that there’s not a thing inside us called a self. One way to express that is to say that we are a colony of sub-personalities and each of those sub-personalities is in fact not a noun but a verb—a doing. One of my doings is Shinzen the researcher.

the hearing, contemplation, and study of Madhyamaka and Prajnaparamita are essential.

Essentially, all dharmas are non-dharmas. That is, they are nothing more than arbitrary designations behind which nothing is real. In the Diamond Sutra (Chapters 8 and 17), the Buddha says, “As for dharmas, Subhuti, only as non-dharmas can we speak of dharmas.”