A Reflection on Saltzman, Self, and the Strange Freedom of “Nothing To Do”

John Fogg

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A Reflection on Saltzman, Self, and the Strange Freedom of “Nothing To Do”

Robert Saltzman always gets me. He offers something so plain, so unadorned, so relentlessly ordinary that my mind can’t help but reach for it— only to discover there’s nothing to grab. And that’s the point.

Saltzman has a way of saying things that makes me think. I mean really think. Not the habitual, default mind chatter that has me most days, but thinking on purpose. The kind of thinking that asks, “Is what I’ve believed for decades actually true?” He gives me that gift.

His recent piece on Krishnamurti, choiceless awareness, and “awakening” hit right at the heart of my own lifelong inquiry. I’ve studied the “self,” the no-self, presence, ego, intuition, mindfulness, mindemptiness, Being— capital B— and the whole philosophical/spiritual circus. And every now and then, someone like Saltzman comes along and knocks over the tent.

What he says is disarmingly simple:

There is no path.
There is no one to walk the path.
Awareness is already choiceless.
Experience is already happening.
The self isn’t a mistake—it’s just something the organism does.

That’s a radical thing to hear when you’ve spent decades trying to improve, evolve, become more aware, more conscious, more present. Saltzman isn’t doing any of that. He’s not even trying. He’s reporting from the place where the trying stopped.

What “fell away” for him wasn’t the self— it was the lifelong tension of believing there was someone inside managing everything. The imaginary curator. The backstage director. The one who’s supposed to optimize, fix, improve, regulate, refine… and, if you listen to most spiritual traditions, awaken.

Saltzman says: there is no such someone.

And the strange thing is… when I take that seriously, even for a moment, something softens. Something unclenches. Life becomes less about “What should I do to be more aware?” and more about “What’s simply happening right now?”

That’s the part of Saltzman that resonates with what I’ve been calling mindempty. The dropping of effort. The dropping of the story about needing to drop effort. The recognition that thoughts think themselves. Awareness notices by itself. Life lives itself.

No method.
No project.
No transformation to chase.

Just the flow of experience— without the imagined manager riding shotgun.

This doesn’t contradict my own work on Speaking and Listening or AAAA—Awareness, Attention, Acceptance, Appreciation. In fact, in a strange way, it deepens it. Because it reminds me that listening happens. Awareness happens. Attention is focused. Acceptance and Appreciation happen. Not because a “self” is making them happen, but because that’s what life does when it’s not being micromanaged.

Saltzman invites me to think— not to struggle, not to fix, not to transcend— but to look honestly at what’s actually going on. And in that looking, something becomes clearer:

Whatever I call “me” is just part of the show.
Whatever I call “self” is a useful tool, not a tyrant.
And whatever I’m trying to become… maybe I already am.

So yes— Saltzman pushes beyond my grasp sometimes. But maybe that’s because what he’s pointing to can’t be grasped at all. Only noticed. Only lived.

Which, come to think of it, is exactly what life has been doing all along.

Thanks for the nudge, Robert. And thank you— whoever “you” are— for keeping me thinking on purpose.