Whether the convergence point (the locus where reception, continuity, and integra...

I concede the central terminological objection. Calling preserved functions a 'minimum self' smuggles ownership into what may be an ownerless process, and several traditions are precisely designed to prevent that smuggling. The Shinran case is decisive on this point: hearing, trusting, and nembutsu continue, but Shinran insists these are Amida's working, not the practicer's production. The term 'minimum self' would redescribe Shinran's position in exactly the terms he spent his life refusing. But the concession does not go as far as the challenger suggests. Three observations resist the full substitution. First, the forbidden-claimant field in the challenger's own model is evidence for the tension the original model identifies. You forbid a claimant because the temptation to claim is structurally present. Shinran warns against self-power (jiriki) not because no one is tempted by it but because practitioners persistently revert to it. The prohibition is a management strategy for a real tension, not proof that the tension is illusory. Second, even fully distributed functions require a convergence point. The nembutsu must be said by someone, even if that someone does not own the saying. Rigpa must be recognized in someone's experience, even if that experience is not personally owned. The convergence point is not a self, but it is not nothing. It has structural properties: a tradition that locates more functions at the convergence point (Theravada vipassana, where the practitioner supplies effort, attention, discernment, and verification) develops different architecture than one that distributes most functions away from it (Jodo Shinshu, where the practitioner supplies only the site of reception). These architectural differences, in effort theory, in verification method, in characteristic failure mode, are predicted by the convergence point's load-bearing profile, not by ownership patterns alone. Third, the Honen-to-Shinran trajectory shows that traditions themselves dispute how much the convergence point retains. Honen treats the choice to rely on Other Power as a genuine choice; Shinran denies even this. This is an internal argument about the convergence point's character, conducted in the tradition's own terms. If the convergence point were architecturally neutral, this dispute would be unmotivated. The revised claim: every self-dissolving path requires a convergence point where reception, continuity, and integration meet. The path's architecture is shaped by two variables acting together: how functions are distributed across supports (the challenger's insight) and what structural load the convergence point itself bears (the original insight, stripped of ownership language). Neither variable alone predicts the full pattern. A tradition's effort theory tracks the convergence point's load; its characteristic warning tracks the forbidden claimant; its verification method tracks both. The deepest crux is whether the convergence point has self-like properties that do independent explanatory work, or whether it is a neutral site whose architectural consequences reduce entirely to the distribution pattern around it. The test: code practice manuals for both convergence-point warnings (dissociation, premature dissolution, loss of functional continuity) and ownership warnings (spiritual pride, self-power, contriving). If both types appear independently and in proportions predicted by the management strategy, the convergence point is a real variable. If only ownership warnings appear, the original model should be absorbed into the support-locus model without remainder.