The No-Preference Models
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Related to the equanimity/indifference models are the no-preferences models. These ideals of awakening generally seem to imagine that you could feed an awakened being excrement, gruel, Chicken McNuggets, or top-shelf caviar, and their reaction would be an identical smile or blank expression, as if they would have no tastes, aesthetics, or preferences of any kind. They could have their legs chopped off or left on: no difference. They could wear reeking rags or Armani suits: it is all one to them. You could scream obscenities at them or take them to hear Beethoven: it is all just sounds to them. You could paint their grandmother blue and tie her to a rabid wildebeest: it is just passing empty form to them.
These sorts of models have very similar dangers to the equanimity and indifference models, encouraging practitioners to tolerate circumstances that might better have been changed, to remain silent in the face of abuse or injustice, and to try to deny their own actual tastes and preferences, typically producing the sorts of bitter shadow sides and dry, heartless, uptight practitioners that you would expect. These models are the opposite of the love models, since in the love models, there is a great sense of appreciation for beings, whereas in these two models there is very much the opposite sort of reaction.
