In contemporary meditation culture, in spiritual discourse, and in ordinary moments of introspection, there is a particularly persistent illusion: the sense that *behind* all our changing experience there is a stable watcher — a "real me" that observes thoughts, feelings, sensations, and the world. This watcher often feels luminous, spacious, even peaceful. And it is precisely this watcher that Chan Buddhism calls 精魂 — and it is not a compliment.
The classical sources we're working with — the *Record of Ancient Venerable Monks* (《古尊宿語錄》) and the *Recorded Sayings of Chan Master Hongzhi* (《宏智禪師廣錄》) — both treat 精魂 as something to be critiqued, investigated, and ultimately transcended. It is not the worst error a person can make (that would be full-blown confusion); nor is it the destination (that would be 灵知, "luminous knowing," or 佛性, Buddha-nature). It is, instead, the most *refined* error — the one that catches sincere practitioners most often.
So this is a concept about where you stop looking, and about why the place you stopped is still not home.
这个概念在说什么
A layered landscape of "self"
To understand 精魂, you have to see where it sits among other layers of self-recognition. The classical record lays out a gradient, and being precise about each layer is essential — because collapsing them is exactly the mistake Chan is warning against.
Layer 1 — 四大五蕴 (the four great elements + five aggregates). This is the obvious "me": the body, the breath, the sensations, the perceptions, the mental formations, the everyday consciousness that recognizes and reacts. When a person says "I am hungry," "I am tired," "I am my résumé and my relationships," they are identifying with this layer. It's not wrong as a working convention, but it's not what Chan is pointing at. 《古尊宿語錄》 puts it bluntly in a dharma talk: the master begins by saying, "If you recognize this, it is just 四大五蕴" — i.e., you've stopped at the surface.
Layer 2 — 精魂 (the subtle spirit-subject). When a practitioner goes deeper — through silence, through stillness, through the disciplines of *趣寂息念* ("settling into quiescence and ceasing thought") — they may encounter a subtler sense of self. The record describes this state with four negatives: 不出不入、不聚不散 — "neither coming out nor going in, neither gathering nor scattering." In this state, the gross body-thoughts quiet down, and what remains is a sense of pure witnessing: a luminous, still, awake "I" that seems to be the subject of all experience. The master says: "If you can recognize this, you've identified the 精魂." It is *deeper* than 四大五蕴, and yet — and here is the entire teaching — it is still not the ultimate.
Layer 3 — 灵知 (luminous knowing) / 佛性 (Buddha-nature). This is what the record, in a contrasting verse, calls 珍重灵知者，绵绵亘古今 — "Cherish the luminous knowing; it stretches unbroken through past and present." This is knowing *as such*, without an owner, without a fixed subject who possesses it. The same record that criticizes 精魂 uses 灵知 with full affirmation. We'll come back to this contrast, because it's the key to seeing what 精魂 *isn't*.
So 精魂 is the middle layer — and middle layers are the most dangerous, because the practitioner who reaches them often feels they've arrived.
What exactly is the 精魂?
Both classical sources define it consistently, even though they emphasize different angles.
From 《古尊宿語錄》: 精魂 is the subject that is grasped in the moment of stilling — that is, when the practitioner stops discursive thought and enters a quiet meditative absorption, what they take to be the deepest "self" they can locate. It is the witnesser-of-experience, the still point, the "pure awareness" that feels like home. The record treats it as a real *something* (not pure illusion) but as a stopping place that must be passed through. It is "recognized" — *认得箇精魂* — but not ultimate.
From 《宏智禪師廣錄》: 精魂 is identical with what Chan calls 识神 ("consciousness-spirit") — the subject that clings to the six sense-objects (色声香味触法) and undergoes arising-and-ceasing (流转生灭). Every time the eye sees, the ear hears, the nose smells, the tongue speaks, the hand grasps, the foot runs — at each of these six gates there is functioning. The question is: at the moment of functioning, do you recognize the essence (识得本体 = Buddha-nature), or do you grasp the function as a subject (不识 = 精魂/识神)?
This second framing is sharper. It says: 精魂 is not a special meditative state; it is the default mode of every moment of experience when the six faculties are operating without recognition. Every ordinary moment of seeing-without-knowing is 精魂 at work. The meditator who thinks they've left it behind has often just made it more subtle.
The record then cites the devastating verse attributed to Changsha (长沙和尚偈):
*学道之人不悟真，只为从前认识神。* *无量劫来生死本，痴人唤作本来人。* "Students of the way don't awaken to the true — only because, until now, they have known the 识神. The root of birth-and-death through countless kalpas — the fool calls it the original person."
This is the strongest indictment in the entire classical material. The 精魂 is not just an error; it is the root of samsara itself — because as long as you identify with the consciousness-spirit that grasps objects, you are reborn through that grasping, again and again.
The Ruoyan koan: 一主人公死，一主人公活
The most subtle treatment of 精魂 in 《古尊宿語錄》 is the case of Ruoyan (瑞巖). Ruoyan had a strange practice: he would call out to himself, "Master!" (主人) and answer himself, "Yes?" (公). Together this self-dialogue forms 主人公 — "the protagonist" or "the master" of one's own life. His purpose: 他后莫受人瞒 — "so that later, you won't be fooled by others."
This is, on the surface, a sophisticated practice. He is keeping watch over himself, reminding himself not to be deceived, maintaining a kind of inner sovereignty. It looks like the very picture of awakened self-awareness.
When Xuansha (玄沙) heard of this practice, his comment was half-praising, half-critiquing: "一等弄精魂，犹较些子" — "This sort of playing with the subtle spirit-subject is *somewhat* better." Better than complete delusion, yes — but not thorough liberation. The phrase "弄精魂" ("playing with / working the subtle spirit-subject") is the key technical term here. It captures the activity of *engaging* with this subject — recognizing it, manipulating it, using it as a tool for self-vigilance — without having seen through it completely.
The later Chan master Donglin (东林) composed a verse on this case:
*一主人公死，一主人公活。* *若解弄精魂，两头皆透脱。* "One protagonist dies, one protagonist lives. If you truly know how to work the subtle spirit-subject, both ends are transcended."
This is extraordinarily precise. There are two protagonists in Ruoyan's self-call: a "dead" one (the conceptual, fabricated sense of "I am the master" that has been seen through) and a "living" one (the genuine, functioning knowing that cannot be killed without losing everything). To *truly* "play with" the 精魂 is to neither suppress the living one nor cling to the dead one — to see through both, and let both be transparent. 两头皆透脱 — "both ends penetrated through."
This is not annihilation. It is not the destruction of subjectivity. It is the difference between a master who owns the household and a household that functions masterfully without anyone owning it. The first is 精魂; the second is the mirror-and-valley that Hongzhi describes.
The mirror and the valley — what comes after 精魂
Once you stop being 精魂, what do you become? Both classical sources, in their own ways, gesture at the answer without trying to define it as a new object.
Hongzhi's image: 如镜照像、谷答响 — "like a mirror reflecting images, like a valley answering echoes." A mirror doesn't *possess* the images; it doesn't store them, judge them, or identify with them. It reflects. A valley doesn't *decide* to echo; the echo arises as a natural response. The functioning is perfect, the responsiveness is total, but there is no fixed subject doing the functioning. This is what Chan calls 佛性 (Buddha-nature), or, in the contrasting verse of 《古尊宿語錄》, 灵知 (luminous knowing) — 绵绵亘古今, stretching unbroken through past and present.
Crucially, Hongzhi says: 须彻底及尽去 — the practitioner must "thoroughly and exhaustively let go." Not suppress, not redirect, not transform into a higher object. Let go until there's nothing left to hold. Only then does the mirror-and-valley function appear naturally.
The classical Chinese term is 放尽识神 — "release all the way through the consciousness-spirit." 放 is not "destroy"; it is "let go" — like opening a fist that has been gripping too long. What you find when you open the fist completely is that there was never a separate hand holding anything.
How 精魂 relates to its neighbors
The classical record is careful to distinguish 精魂 from several neighboring terms, and getting these distinctions right is essential:
| Term | Relation to 精魂 | Valence | |---|---|---| | 主人公 (protagonist/master) | Same referent (subtle self); different rhetorical framing. Ruoyan calls it "master" in self-affirmation; Xuansha calls it "精魂" in critique. | Neutral/critical | | 识神 (consciousness-spirit) | Synonymous in Hongzhi's strict usage; both names for the subject-of-grasping at the six gates. | Critical | | 灵知 (luminous knowing) | Different — the same record praises this in one verse and criticizes 精魂 in another. Both are "spiritual," but 灵知 is *knowing without owner*, while 精魂 is *knowing with implicit owner*. | Affirmative | | 业识 (karmic consciousness) | Same root (同根共脉). All conceptual arrangement, all "thinking things through" (思量辩白), all "approximate grasping" (依俙仿佛) is 业识 flowing — and 精魂 is its foundation. | Critical | | 四大五蕴 (body-and-mind) | *Shallower* layer; you pass through this on the way to 精魂, then through 精魂 on the way to 灵知. | Neutral/stopping-point |
This table is the key to keeping the concept precise. 精魂 is not the mind in general; it is specifically the subtle "I am the witness" structure that mediates experience. It is not the body; it is what you encounter when the body-thoughts quiet down. It is not the ultimate; it is the most *insidious* imitation of the ultimate.
生活里的走查
Let's walk through this carefully, using scenarios contemporary readers will recognize. The key instruction in the classical material is: don't let the subtle self hide by becoming more subtle.
Scenario 1: The meditation app
You sit down with a meditation app — Headspace, Calm, Waking Up, or one of a dozen others. You follow the guide. The guide says, "Notice your thoughts. You are not your thoughts. You are the awareness that notices them." After some minutes, you find a state that feels clear, spacious, peaceful. There is a "you" watching, and that you feels still, undisturbed, free of the day's anxieties.
Mapping this onto the classical layers:
- If what you're experiencing is bodily sensations, breath, mental chatter, planning, judging — that's 四大五蕴 territory. The app is helping you notice it, which is useful. - If what you're experiencing is "the one who is noticing all that" — a sense of being the silent witness, the screen on which the movie plays — you have arrived at 精魂. The app has, perhaps unintentionally, guided you here. - If what you're experiencing is no-witnesser, just the open functioning of seeing-without-an-owner-that-sees — you have, for a moment, glimpsed 灵知 territory. But most people don't end up here even after years of practice, because the very sense of "I have arrived" is 精魂 reasserting itself.
The practical walk-through: at the moment you notice "I am the awareness," *ask*: who is the one noticing that? Then notice the one who noticed that. Then notice the one who noticed that. The classical instruction 两头皆透脱 is this — neither clutching the witness (because that would be the "dead" protagonist who still thinks he's the master) nor denying witnessing itself (because that would be denying the "living" protagonist, the genuine functioning of awareness). See through the *owner* of awareness without seeing through awareness itself.
This is what Changsha's verse warns against: 痴人唤作本来人 — "the fool calls it the original person." The "I am awareness" experience feels so real, so foundational, that practitioners mistake it for the destination. Hongzhi's diagnosis is exactly this: 不识即为精魂. "Not recognizing" (不识) — at every sense-gate — is what makes functioning fall into 精魂.
Scenario 2: The spiritual identity
You have been practicing for a while. You no longer identify strongly with your job title. You are less reactive in arguments. You notice that you are "more awake" than most people around you. You find yourself saying, "I've moved beyond ego," or "I'm not really attached to outcomes." You may even feel a subtle warmth toward others who seem less aware — and a subtle pity.
Walking through: the gross ego (job title, social role, possessions) — that's 四大五蕴 territory, and yes, you've loosened your grip on it. But the *one who is now loose from these things* — the one who feels above attachment, who has transcended ego, who watches others with compassion — that's 精魂. It has simply moved up a floor in the building. It's still a subject; it's just a more refined one.
Hongzhi's instruction is surgical here: 凡作道理安排、思量辩白依俙仿佛者，皆业识流注，与精魂同根共脉 — "All conceptual arrangement, all approximate thinking and discernment, flows from the same root as 精魂." The moment you are *thinking about* your non-attachment, you are back in 业识 territory. The moment you are *knowing you have transcended*, you have re-crystallized 精魂.
The walk-through: notice the pride. Don't suppress it (that would be another move of 精魂). Don't celebrate it. Just see it as the same substance as the gross ego you thought you'd left behind, only wearing finer clothes.
Scenario 3: The difficult conversation
You are in a conflict — with a partner, a parent, a colleague. You remember your practice. You step back. You notice the emotions rising. You adopt what contemporary therapy sometimes calls "the observer self" or what ACT calls "defusion." You tell yourself, "I am not my anger; I am the one watching the anger." This feels mature, spacious, even noble.
Mapping: the moment you say "I am the one watching the anger" — you have identified the 主人公. Xuansha's comment applies: 弄精魂. You are "playing with" the subtle spirit-subject. It works, in a limited way — it does create some space. But it also installs a subtle *manager* of your experience. From now on, every difficult feeling has to pass through this manager first. The manager then becomes a new filter, a new attachment point.
The deeper instruction, from Donglin's verse: 一主人公死，一主人公活. Let the "dead" protagonist — the one who says "I am above this" — die. Let the "living" protagonist — the genuine, responsive, unmasked functioning of awareness — remain. Both ends transcended means: you don't lose the ability to respond (because the living one remains), but you also don't install a watcher who stands above everything (because the dead one is seen through).
In practical terms: in the next difficult moment, instead of "I am watching my anger," try simply noticing what happens without adding the "I am watching" frame. There is anger. There is breathing. There is the body's response. There is no separate watcher *added to* these. Functioning continues. The mirror reflects; it doesn't also install a little mirror-keeper.
Scenario 4: The flow state
You are writing, coding, painting, playing music. Time dissolves. There is no sense of a separate "you" doing the activity; there is just the activity. Afterwards, you reflect: "I was completely in the zone. I wasn't thinking; I was just doing."
Mapping: the during-state of flow is, experientially, very close to what Chan describes as mirror-and-valley functioning. There is no fixed subject standing above the activity. But the *after-reflection* — "I was in the zone" — re-introduces the subject. The retrospective "I" who was in the zone is 精魂 reasserting itself as the owner of even the selfless moments.
This is why Chan insists on practice that is *continuous* — not just glimpses during meditation, but the same mirror-and-valley quality during washing dishes, arguing with a colleague, doing laundry. Otherwise, the flow state becomes another possession of the subtle self: "I have experienced no-self." Which is, of course, the most exquisite self of all.
Scenario 5: The contemplative's late-stage confusion
You have been practicing for years. You have had glimpses. You sit. You notice that the "I" is not as solid as it used to be. You find yourself in a strange in-between place: not really identifying with anything, but also not knowing what you *do* identify with. There is a quality of "just this." Some teachers would call this "advanced." You might call it "confusing."
Mapping carefully: there are at least three possibilities here, and getting the diagnosis wrong matters.
- If what you're experiencing is still subtly owned — if there's a faint sense of "this is my practice, my awakening, my just-this" — that's still 精魂, just very thin. - If what you're experiencing is genuinely no-owner, no-subject, but you don't yet know how to *function* from that place (you can't work, can't relate, can't act decisively) — you've glimpsed 灵知 but haven't yet grown roots in it. This is what Hongzhi means by needing to 放尽识神, all the way through, until mirror-and-valley functioning becomes continuous. - If what you're experiencing is numbness, dissociation, or a vague spaciness — that's neither. That's suppression, the wrong kind of 放尽. The classical record doesn't dwell on this, but it's a real modern risk, especially for practitioners who've been taught "let go" without precision about *what* to let go of and *how*.
The classical diagnostic is precise: ask at every sense-gate, "识得即佛性，不识即为精魂." At each — eye, ear, nose, tongue, hand, foot — at the moment of functioning, is there recognition (recognizing the essence), or is there grasping (the function falling into a subject)? This is not a one-time question; it is the texture of every moment.
当代人为什么需要它
The concept of 精魂 is, in some ways, more urgent today than it was in 12th-century China — and in other ways, harder to see.
The wellness industry has industrialized the 精魂. Apps, retreats, certifications, even some therapy modalities, often culminate in the teaching "you are the awareness behind your thoughts." This is *true at one level* — but it is also the most efficient production line for 精魂 in human history. Millions of people now have a vocabulary for "the witness" and an identity built around being "the one who watches." Some of these people are genuinely kinder, less reactive, more present. Some are quietly more attached than ever — to their witnessing, their spaciousness, their non-reactivity. The concept of 精魂 gives a precise diagnostic for distinguishing the two.
Subtle pride is the trap of contemporary spirituality. The classical record is unflinching about this: even *thinking* you have moved beyond ego is 精魂. The contemporary equivalent is the person whose spiritual practice has become a subtle way to feel superior — to the unspiritual, the reactive, the "still asleep." This is 弄精魂 at its most refined: the practitioner who skillfully maintains a sense of being the master of their inner life, and who uses this mastery as a quiet form of social positioning. The classical record, especially Xuansha's comment on Ruoyan, applies perfectly: *better than total delusion, but not thorough liberation.*
It offers precision where modern practice often offers platitudes. "Be present" can mean anything from genuine selfless awareness to an elaborately constructed identity of being the present one. "You are not your thoughts" can be a liberation or a more subtle entrapment. "Observe without judgment" can dissolve the observer or install a more sophisticated one. Without the classical distinction between 灵知 and 精魂 — between knowing-without-owner and knowing-as-mine — these phrases collapse into each other, and practitioners can't tell which one they're doing.
It diagnoses the root of suffering, not just its symptoms. Hongzhi's claim, citing Changsha, is severe: 精魂 is 无量劫来生死本 — "the root of birth-and-death through countless kalpas." This is not about one meditation session going badly. It is the claim that the structure of self-clinging, at its most refined, is what causes the cycle of rebirth. From a contemporary perspective: even if we set aside the metaphysical claim about rebirth, the *psychological* claim is striking — that the subtlest form of "I" is what keeps the cycle of self-conflict, self-protection, and self-narration running. Modern psychotherapy is increasingly recognizing something similar: that identification with the "observing self" can itself become a defense mechanism, a way of avoiding full contact with experience.
It points past itself. 精魂 is not the answer; it is the diagnostic that shows you where you've stopped looking. This is rare in modern contemplative discourse, which often offers either "you've arrived" or "you're not trying hard enough." The classical teaching is neither. It says: there is a place you will mistake for home. Knowing this place exists — knowing its features, its seductive qualities, its specific traps — is itself a form of liberation. Not because seeing the trap frees you automatically, but because you can no longer mistake it for the destination.
常见误读与澄清
Misreading 1: 精魂 = "the mind" or "consciousness" in general
This is the most common flattening. In everyday usage, 精魂 might be rendered as "spirit" or "soul," and a casual reader might assume it just means "the mental realm." But the classical record is precise: 精魂 is specifically the subject-of-grasping at the six sense-gates — not consciousness in general, not mind in general, not awareness in general. Pure functioning of awareness, without the grasping structure, is precisely what Chan calls 灵知 or 佛性 — and is *opposed* to 精魂.
Clarification: when the record says 精魂 is to be transcended, it is not saying "transcend consciousness." It is saying "transcend the structure of *I-am-the-witness*." Consciousness continues — more vividly, more responsively — but without the subject that possesses it.
Misreading 2: 精魂 = the highest realization
This is the precise trap Changsha warns against: 痴人唤作本来人 — "the fool calls it the original person." The "I am pure awareness" experience, the "I am the witness behind everything" experience, the "I am the screen on which the movie plays" experience — all of these feel foundational. They feel like home. They feel like the destination. They are, according to the classical record, the most refined form of self-deception.
Clarification: if your realization can be stated as "I am ___" (awareness, witness, consciousness, the observer, the dreamer of the dream), it is still 精魂. Genuine Chan realization, in this lineage, is not stated as "I am." It is reflected in functioning: mirror-like, valley-like, responsive without subject.
Misreading 3: 精魂 should be suppressed or destroyed
Some readers, encountering the strong critique of 精魂 in the record, conclude that the practice is to kill it — to forcibly annihilate the sense of self. This is not the teaching. Hongzhi uses the word 放 (release, let go), not 灭 (destroy). Donglin's verse explicitly preserves the "living protagonist" alongside the "dead" one. The function of witnessing, the capacity to know, the responsiveness of awareness — these are not to be destroyed; they are to be released from ownership.
Clarification: the difference is between *killing the watcher* (which leaves dissociation, numbness, or nihilism) and *seeing through the owner* (which leaves full, responsive functioning with no fixed subject grasping at it). The former is suppression; the latter is liberation. The classical record is on the side of the latter, unambiguously.
Misreading 4: 精魂 is just a poetic term for "ego"
" Ego " in modern parlance usually means something like "self-centeredness" or "narcissism." 精魂 is more specific. It is not the prideful, boastful self; it is the subtle witnessing self that survives even the dissolution of the boastful self. A person with no ego in the ordinary sense may still have a very refined 精魂. The contemplative who has learned humility, kindness, and non-attachment may still be operating from 精魂 — only more quietly, more elegantly, more invisibly.
Clarification: 精魂 is not cured by becoming less egotistical in the conventional sense. It is cured — or rather, *seen through* — by something more like the dissolution of the *owner* at every sense-gate, in every moment. This is why Hongzhi's diagnostic is so precise and so unsparing: at the eye, at the ear, at every gate, *is there recognition, or is there grasping?*
Misreading 5: 精魂 means Chan rejects all subjectivity
This is the philosophical misreading. Some readers, encountering the strong critique of subject-positing in Chan, conclude that the teaching is anti-subject, anti-self, anti-agency. The classical record does not support this. Donglin's verse explicitly preserves the "living protagonist." Hongzhi's images of mirror and valley preserve full functioning. The Chan teaching is not "there is no self"; it is "the self that grasps is not the self that functions."
Clarification: the mirror reflects, and the reflection is genuine. The valley echoes, and the echo is real. The function is not denied. What is denied is the *separate self that owns the function*. 《金刚经》 puts it in its most famous formulation — "应无所住而生其心" — "give rise to a mind that abides nowhere." The mind arises; it functions; it does not *abide in* itself as a subject. This is the living protagonist without the dead one.
Misreading 6: 精魂 can be transcended by thinking about it
宏智禅师 is explicit: 凡作道理安排、思量辩白依俙仿佛者，皆业识流注. "All conceptual arrangement, all approximate thinking and discernment, flows from karmic consciousness." This means that *thinking about 精魂* — analyzing it, philosophizing about it, getting it conceptually — is itself 精魂 activity. The very move of "I understand the concept of subtle self and have moved past it" is 精魂 at work.
Clarification: this is why the classical record emphasizes 放尽 — release, not analyze. The release is not a thought; it is a letting-go at the level of the sense-gates themselves. Hongzhi's metaphor of the mirror is not a concept to be understood; it is a way of functioning to be embodied. The mirror doesn't *think* about being a mirror; it just reflects.
Misreading 7: 精魂 is a sectarian Chan term, irrelevant elsewhere
While 精魂 is a specifically Chan technical term, the structure it points to is recognized across contemplative traditions. Theravāda Buddhism talks about the "I-making" (attavāda-upādāna) that survives even deep samādhi. Vedānta distinguishes between the *witness* (sākṣin) as ultimate reality and the *witness-as-possessed* as subtle error. Christian mysticism has centuries of writing on the difference between "the soul's union with God" as a felt experience and the *ownership* of that experience. Even contemporary neuroscience has begun to notice the layered structure of self — the default-mode network, the "observing self" of meta-awareness, the question of whether the watcher can watch the watcher.
These are not identical to the Chan teaching, and we should not claim they are. But they suggest that the structure 精魂 names — the subtle sense of being-the-witness — is not a regional oddity. It is a feature of contemplative experience across cultures. The classical Chan diagnosis, refined over centuries, may be the most precise map we have of its traps.
Clarification: when science or other traditions talk about the "observing self" or the "minimal self" or the "narrative self," they are pointing at overlapping phenomena. But the *evaluation* differs — some traditions treat this subtle self as the highest attainment; the Chan tradition treats it as the most refined obstacle. To learn from both, hold them lightly, neither collapsing them nor exaggerating their agreement.
Closing
精魂 is, in the end, a teaching about fineness of discernment. The gross self — body, possessions, social roles — is easy to see through. The *very subtle* self — the witness, the awareness, the "I am the one who is present" — is hard to see through, because it wears the clothes of liberation. It speaks in the language of presence, of peace, of awakening. It smiles with the compassion of a Buddha. And it is, the record insists, the place where most sincere practitioners stop.
The invitation is not to destroy the witness. The mirror reflects; the valley echoes. The witness functions. But it does not *own* the functioning. There is reflecting, with no mirror-self standing behind the glass.
As the 《心经》 puts it, in a verse far older than these Chan records but pointing the same way: 照见五蕴皆空，度一切苦厄 — "Illuminating, one sees that the five aggregates are all empty; thus all suffering is crossed over." The five aggregates (color/五蕴 = the same family as 四大五蕴) are empty. But the "five aggregates" in that verse is precisely the structure that includes the 精魂 — the witness is among the aggregates. It, too, is empty. It, too, is to be seen through. Not killed. *Seen through.*
And then — the mirror reflects. The valley answers. The living protagonist remains. The dead protagonist is, at last, allowed to rest.