Radical Zen philosophy focusing intensely on the dissolution of the self. The author contends that spiritual inquiry, particularly the koan, is designed not to provide answers but to "vaporize the one demanding them," exposing the "I" as merely a conceptual habit or "placeholder made of dust." This text emphasizes the teachings of Zen masters like Huangbo and Linji, asserting that liberation occurs through the complete collapse of the seeker and the conceptual constructs of self, time, and biography. The ultimate point is that nothing was ever missing and that the questioner itself is the sole obstruction to the answer, resulting in an "obvious, stripped bare" presence without drama or fanfare.