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Is sexual orientation an "ego-based notion of self"?
zombiegirl
beating the drum of the lifelessin a dry wasteland Veteran
An excerpt from the book I'm currently reading, Sex, Sin, and Zen by Brad Warner:
But maybe it's just my ego-based notion of the self getting all offended, haha. Just kidding, I'm not really offended... Just wondering what other people think about his comment. I have this weird love/hate relationship with Brad Warner because I find him very refreshing and candid, but also kind of self-absorbed at times. But maybe he's just a few steps ahead of me because I do have to frequently step back and wonder how much I'm simply projecting and how much is really him just stroking his ego.
"Please understand that I have no difficulty with any of the ways people choose to define themselves in terms of gender, sexual orientation, or whatever other factors we use to enhance our ego-based notions of self. I understand the social usefulness of these new ways of defining ourselves, and I'm not against them in any way. Others have written about that subject far more eloquently than I ever could. It's just that I personally don't have a whole lot of interest in ego-based notions of self. But who you choose to fuck and how you choose to do it, well, that's none of my business or anyone else's other than the people you fuck."It's interesting to me because he seems to get it when the says things like how he understands the 'social usefulness', and yet, he continues to insult by calling it 'ego-based notions of the self'. He says it several times over a few paragraphs that he's not against it, he just doesn't care... and yet... he wrote an entire book about sex (obviously heterosexual), so clearly he does care. He just doesn't seem to recognize that homosexuality is just the same as heterosexuality. That by coming out and saying, "I'm gay" it doesn't mean the same as, "I am a football enthusiast with blonde hair and I scored straight As in high school." It's just that as a minority, you're constantly forced to bring attention to your differences, whether you want to or not. Most of my days I just go about life feeling pretty normal until someone else reminds me that I am a minority, and yes, society wants a label. If I identify as a lesbian, it's not to enhance my ego and give me an identity, it's just calling a spade a spade. I am attracted to the ladies, thus, lesbian.
But maybe it's just my ego-based notion of the self getting all offended, haha. Just kidding, I'm not really offended... Just wondering what other people think about his comment. I have this weird love/hate relationship with Brad Warner because I find him very refreshing and candid, but also kind of self-absorbed at times. But maybe he's just a few steps ahead of me because I do have to frequently step back and wonder how much I'm simply projecting and how much is really him just stroking his ego.
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Cousin - lesbian.
What's the difference?
What we happen to be, does not define 'Who' we are.
'What' - is ego - small 'e'.
ego simply means 'self'
Ego is aggrandisement of Self.... if you see where I'm coming from....
'Who' is the real discovery....
It seems to me that he comes from the POV of wishing to abandon attachment to the Self concept in the scope of abandoning suffering, Seeing how well our mind reacts to perceived abuse is a good way of testing the strength of its Delusion as a lesbian you have a good opportunity to use difficult circumstances such as abuse and bigotry to undermine the Delusion of self cherishing and Self grasping by applying the appropriate methods for doing such.
I define myself, as you do, in terms enforced by society because there is no other yardstick. In the world of opposites, we have to have some yardstick to compare ourselves to. But, it is society that defines us as much as ourselves, and as social animals how people see us has as much or even more effect on our lives as how we see ourselves. Brad is an individualist who doesn't care about how other people see him. That's him doing his own thing and he knows in absolute or Zen terms, how you define yourself or how other people define you is irrelevant. Getting people to comprehend that is a big part of his teaching Zen.
But if people start defining him as a fake or insane or crook and stop buying his books or contributing to his website and supporting his teaching mission, and this ego-based definition immediately becomes relevant. In the real world, your sexual orientation is relevant because society insists it is. That's not ego, that's survival.
"What am I?" Well, I either am or am not disabled. I either am or am not homeless. I either am or am not heterosexual. I either "am or am not" a whole lot of things, but these are all relative to how other people define a person. That's as much social as individual ego-based.
Certainly it's all relative, but that doesn't mean it's invalid or wrong, only relative instead of absolute. Ultimate emptiness does not mean form doesn't exist or isn't valid. That's a common mistake in Zen and even someone wise like Brad Warner can get tripped up on it sometimes when trying to talk about Zen attitudes using language designed for absolute thinking. I probably made a bunch of mistakes just in this one post, where what I really meant isn't what came out.
Of course I don't think he is talking about the simple definition of "I am American" or "I am gay" as simply being "an American citizen" or "person who is attracted to the same sex" but rather the idea of "I am American" or "I am gay" that creates a separation between self and other. An idea that excludes others from "your group" and sets them apart. You could say that anything that creates this artificial idea of separation is a ego-based notion of the self. For people who are homophobic, their sexual orientation, even though it is heterosexual, is certainly an ego-based notion of self.
Reminds me of an interview I happened to see once, with comedian Richard Pryor, and a story he told about an old black guy who was working as a janitor at a comedy club he was doing a show at. Right before he was about to go on stage, the old black janitor guy said to him "Hey man, how you feeling?" Richard responded "Black!" The old guy said "Don't worry, you'll get over it". This is the type of "I am" that Brad is talking about IMO.
In other words, I can define but not be seperate.
I am a tee totaller drug user, a criminal going straight, a Buddha gone to z z z
Now it would be strange if I looked in the mirror and asked who the hell is that? So identity is very much based on experience.
It is important to know who you are but who you are is not important. By that I mean, to identify with a sexual orientation is clearly a normal body based instinct. It may be important for a while, eventually like Richard Pryor you may get over the non essential but then what would we laugh about?
:wave:
Added a little later: actually, thinking about it, I don't think I'm correct because while meditating, thoughts just appear! Can my ego be something that just appears out of nowhere?
I dunno. Ignore me.
Not that this stops anyone...
Can I suggest looking up the skandhas and seeing whether the concept of " ego " is compatible ?
The guy needs to turn off the old rundown thinking machine a bit longer and unwind in more reasonable meditations. To paraphrase ee cummings:
All that isn't singing is mere stinking and all thinking's merely stinking to oneself (and reeking to others).
But maybe it's just my ego-based notion of the self getting all offended, haha. Just kidding, I'm not really offended... Just wondering what other people think about his comment. I have this weird love/hate relationship with Brad Warner because I find him very refreshing and candid, but also kind of self-absorbed at times. But maybe he's just a few steps ahead of me because I do have to frequently step back and wonder how much I'm simply projecting and how much is really him just stroking his ego.
Hard to say as I don't know him and have never read the book. What I think he's trying to say, however, is that making conventional distinctions in the world is useful for the sake of communication, etc.; but if one attaches to them and creates an identity around them (not just using them and letting them go), then this increases and strengthens what he terms our 'ego-based notion of self.'
From an everyday standpoint, this isn't real a big deal. In fact, we're often encouraged to find out 'who we are' and attach to the things that make us unique, what makes us 'individuals,' so these labels tend to carry a lot of weight and begin to define 'who we are,' both to ourselves and to the rest of the world. But from another perspective, doing this has the potential to lay the foundations for the arising of stress and suffering due to that very attachment/clinging (upadana), particularly clinging to the five aggregates (perception being one of them) and the sense of self we create around of them.
Essentially, I see Warner's concept of ''ego-base notions of self" reflecting the way the Buddha talks about self in terms of a process of identity-making or 'I-making' and 'my-making' (ahankara-mamankara) in relation to one or more of the five aggregates, a view that arises due to clinging in regard to the aggregates (e.g., MN 109) and his point similar to that found at the end of DN 9, where the Buddha answers a number of questions concerning the nature of perception: And all of this, of course, ties into the Buddha's teachings on non-self (anatta). For a better understand of what the teachings on not-self mean and how they're used on the path, I suggest Thanissaro Bhikkhu's book Selves & Not-self. I personally find it to be the most balanced and pragmatic approach to the topic.
But maybe it's just my ego-based notion of the self getting all offended, haha. Just kidding, I'm not really offended... Just wondering what other people think about his comment. I have this weird love/hate relationship with Brad Warner because I find him very refreshing and candid, but also kind of self-absorbed at times. But maybe he's just a few steps ahead of me because I do have to frequently step back and wonder how much I'm simply projecting and how much is really him just stroking his ego.
I wouldn't put too much weight into what he says, because a lot of it is deliberately sensational. I mean, just look at the title of the book, "Sex, Sin, and Zen" for instance. He has a fun writing style but isn't much of a deep thinker. For example he writes, "I personally don't have a whole lot of interest in ego-based notions of self," which is a contradiction because he's meaningfully defining himself to his audience as someone who doesn't have such interests. Of course he has a lot of interest in ego-based notions of self. Why try to deny it?
For instance I get
Mistaken for being a girl because i have long hair. At first it sucked and I suffered. Now i am used it and chuckle at the people who mistake their judgement. I am one ugly ass girl haha.
This appearances regardless of what our deepest intutions are experience affirm are all illusion. They are baseless yet they all function and work in the conventional sense.
We have to ask ourselves. Where is the sexual orientation? For example I am a straight male. Why am I attracted to women and repulsed or neutral towards men? What makes a women a women beyond the ideology?
These are common sense questions. But buddhist ignorance is pointing to our arrogance. We think we have everything figured out and on top of that we trust our perceptions and ideas.
Cute stuff.
Since practicing Buddhism, one of the realizations I've had is that things aren't as solid as we often perceive them to be. This is, of course, common sense, but I don't think that it's something we intuitively realize in our day to day lives for the most part. For example, most people understand that we're biological organisms that change and grow our entire lives — that we're not static entities independent of, and removed from, the material conditions that surround us — and yet we tend to cling with an iron grip to many of the most ephemeral and artificially constructed concepts. And the most insidious of these is identity (a.k.a., self-identity view, ego-grasping, etc.).
I'm more confident than ever that identity is a phenomenon that's influenced by a myriad of internal and external conditions and experiences, and that even some of the most seemingly concrete aspects of our identity are little more than shackles that we, as a society, unconsciously place on ourselves. That's not to say that certain things aren't beyond our control, but I'd argue that what's in our control is a lot more than we might imagine, that much of our identity is fluid and malleable.
Pragmatically speaking, I see the need to differentiate between these things for the sake of communication, and as long as the words themselves don't become fixed entities corresponding to permanent realities, there's no problem (again, refer to the Buddha's words near the end of DN 9). But when these labels become representations of things which we then habitually cling to without acknowledging their limitations, I think they can become a serious problem. Hence my wariness of things like identity politics, for example, despite the need to address things like discrimination and inequality in our society.
The way I see it, identity politics that separate individuals and groups into various classes run the risk of becoming antagonistic due to the contradictory nature of the various classes themselves, especially if these distinctions of class become solidified and clung to as concretely, independently existing things. In other words, identity politics can actually reinforce the barriers in society that alienate one class from another by artificially segregating them into separate classes to begin with (e.g., gay, straight, black, white, male, female, educated, uneducated, rich, poor, native, foreign, etc.).
Case in point. When I was young, I came home from school crying and I asked my Mom why I wasn't black. Although I don't remember any of this myself, she told me that when she asked what was wrong, I told her that I was upset because the kids at school said they wouldn't play with me because I wasn't black. Up until that point, I grew up in a hotel in Detroit with a very diverse mixture of tenets. Being the only kid in the entire hotel, I got a lot of attention from everyone and I was never really exposed to the racial conflicts that existed in the outside world.
For me, in my little world inside that hotel, we were all the same—black, white, men, women, American, Filipino, etc. Almost everyone treated me as a part of their community and I saw them as part of mine. But I imagine that the kids at my school — kids who were exposed to different and less sheltered circumstances — were already acquainted with the harsh realities of racism. So even though I didn't know anything about 'race' at the time, and all I wanted to do was play with the other kids and have fun, the idea of race as a class imposed upon these kids had the unfortunate effect of setting me apart from my own community.
For the majority of my life, I never truly understood that identity wasn't a fixed thing—that my 'white' identity wasn't something I was born with, but something which arose out of the historical and material conditions I was born into. And now that I've begun to question these things, I'm beginning to see that my sense of identity and subsequent feelings of alienation are being perpetuated, at least in part, by the very set of identity politics which seeks to destroy these kinds of social barriers because of my attachment to them, my taking "the world's designations, the world's expressions, the world's ways of speaking, the world's descriptions" and grasping at them.
I can't change the colour of my skin (well, not easily anyway), but I can just as easily identify myself as a 'human being' as I can a 'straight white man.' Of course, doing so isn't going to make me classless, but it'll at least help me to avoid falling into an essentialist trap in which I'm not able to explore my own sense of identity in a fluid and dynamic way—a way that won’t alienate me and prevent me from connecting to everyone around me, regardless of their gender, race, sexual orientation, etc.
Not everyone will find themselves attracted to the same-sex by weakening their 'ego-based notion of self,' of course; but I do think that our conception of who we are can be radically changed by doing so. When we stop limiting ourselves by the internalization of, and psychological attachment to, the labels we or others place upon us, we allow ourselves to be more open and less judgmental about ourselves as species beings, creating healthier and less self-absorbed senses of selves, and to expand the possibilities of who we can become, possibly even getting to a point where we're able to drop the need to create a self and experience a level of peace and freedom that transcends space and time.
This guy's ideas are cr@p. He doesn't "get" anything.
Perhaps, but the Buddha thought our sense of self an important place to focus, and I'm content with using his teachings on the aggregates and not-self as the basis of my approach for now.
Weve all wholesome and unwholesome attachments and one knows this.
As far as I can tell (I'm not very far into the book, it's seriously the most boring book on sex I've ever read and keeps putting me to sleep), he doesn't think that meditating and living the Buddhist lifestyle will erase any sort of sexual desire, per se. He talks about two different forms of celibacy: one being the form in which you negate and avoid anything sexual (including thoughts) as a sort of denial, and one in which you still acknowledge you're a sexual being, but that you're just taking a break from it (maybe a long break). I'm bringing this up because it seems to me, to point out that he doesn't believe heterosexuality to be another ego-based notion of the self... but then again, maybe I just haven't read far enough yet. I'll let you guys know, but at the moment, I'm just happy I didn't pay full price for this book.
This is the paragraph before the one quoted: I get that it's not his interest, but it still comes off a little condescending to me. Especially because I haven't seen this "ego-based notions of the self" line describing anything heterosexual (or anything of interest to him) as of yet. If ALL sexual orientation is ego-based, THAT'S an interesting topic... but it is annoying that he seems to feel that homosexuality is an ego-based notion, while heterosexuality is somehow not.