Nagarjuna, the 2nd-century Buddhist philosopher, argued that nothing has a fixed, independent essence — including the self that seems to be doing the suffering. His doctrine of śūnyatā — the insight that all phenomena, including 'you,' arise through relationships and conditions rather than existing as standalone things — sounds abstract until you notice what it actually implies for your inner life. Michael Singer's core move in The Untethered Soul is usually framed as 'witnessing your thoughts,' but Nagarjuna's lens sharpens it considerably: the reason you can witness your thoughts is not that there's a solid 'observer' behind them — it's that neither the thoughts nor the observer are as fixed as they feel. The cage of compulsive rumination is partly built from the assumption that the person being bothered is a fixed entity with permanent stakes. Loosen that assumption experimentally — just for a single anxious thought today — and notice whether the thought still commands the same sense of emergency.

When you last felt stuck in a repeating mental loop, what were you implicitly trying to protect — and how solid is that thing actually?

Drawing from Madhyamaka Buddhism — Nagarjuna