[Gem]

How is one to rate another but for some measure of comparison? Whatever I say of another would usually be in reflection of, or in distinction to, myself, but it could also be in comparison to an idealised figure rendered by my impressions of 'holy texts', and when we identify as Buddhist, is it not endemic to imagine what 'Buddha was like' and compare ones self-image so as to render an ideation? Isn't it symptomatic of Buddhist adherence to aspire to imitate what they imagine Buddha to be?

Isn't it true that the way I imagine any other to be is only a revelation of my own need for self-reference?

In the meditation there is awareness of the arising psychological condition we reference as 'mine'. But we are alone with that, and there is really only the truth of this experience in the way it is experienced - which doesn't actually imply anything about 'a person' - as 'a person', apart from our immediate experience of them, is nothing more than a self-image. Albeit the imagining of another, it is ultimately self-referential.

But people have traits and psychological tendencies that make them recognisable. For example, they change their user name but we recognise the same mannerisms. And so they have a genetic and historical social conditioning, but is there an actual person so disposed, or is that condition itself what we use to infer 'a person?' Is there a form that precedes the function, or does the function, by itself, constitute the form?