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How to explain the concept of ego???
gracelee
Veteran
Hello everyone,
How would you go about explaining what ego is to someone who has never heard of it?
I would like to find a relatively simple way to explain it(obviously I realise it is not a simple concept)
Thanks in advance
Grace
0
Comments
I, me, and mine
Ego: That which makes you think whatever you think, say, do, see, hear and feel, are far more important than anything anyone else says, thinks, does, sees, hears and feels. It is what makes you believe your reality is significant and that your opinions count, more than those of others.
That's 'Ego' with a capital 'E'.
Ego with a lower-case 'e' is as @Jeffrey says, mere personal identification (self), and what you identify your perception of everything, with.
Kia Ora,
Empty Grasping Obsessive Or Empathetic Generous Obliging
Metta Shoshin .
..
In my opinion ego is a commonly used term for sense of self. This sense hopefully will move more to inclusion than exclusion of others. But outside of conversations with neo Freudians I don't use the term ego at all.
"Ego" is the conventional way to refer to the set of skandhas and the passing shreds of consciousness that are your lot in this lifetime.
The user-friendly version might be, that "ego" is that boundary of flesh and mind that makes you think you're separated from other composites of flesh and mind like you.
The ego is one of the three major components of the mind per Sigmund Freud. The function of the ego is to cope with reality.
Over the years the ego has come to mean 'the self' and to me anyway, it's a natural leap. Our personality is in part our 'style' of negotiating with reality, as is our temperament.
Then when the earliest Westerners began to translate the Buddhists texts the word 'ego' was used to denote the small self, the self we identify with at the expense of our awakening. The ego has gotten a bad rap over the years. Eckhart Tolle (among many other teachers) use the term ego in a completely disparaging way, but it looks to me like it is interchangeable with 'small self' in Buddhism, that limited, isolated ignorant little fellow we think is the extent of us.
Originally 'ego' simply meant 'interface', a neither good nor bad thing. You had better have a decently working ego if you want to participate in our complex culture and all its demands.
It's the 'small self' we get confused into identifying exclusively with that is the problem, but when you use the word 'ego' to denote that, it's common enough that you'll be understood
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Hi @gracelee,
I get where you are coming from but the only way you will ever know ego is to be yourself! As much as you may enjoy or dislike it.
Let me give you a simple exercise - when you are in conversation with someone - who is talking and where are the replies and thoughts about the content and meaning of the conversation coming from?
It can be quite - well, disconcerting, like now when I am typing out a reply , 'I' am typing out the reply! But who am I to be able to do this?
Mettha
The Ego is our delusional sense of self.
It's the feeling that there is somebody in our bodies looking out at the world.
That we are somehow separate from our bodies, thoughts or environment.
If you try find the ego apart from the above, you won't find it. It doesn't exist in reality. Although it strongly feels it does.
My understanding anyway, not ego in an arrogance sense.
Trungpa presents it as three lords of materialism: things, beliefs, and states of mind.
I think with the average person you are going to run into a bit of a conflict between the Buddhist idea of ego versus the psychological/Freudian idea of ego. Most people who've taken psychology 101 think of the id, ego and super ego as something necessary to our survival and development, and you are unlikely to get anywhere attempting to have a discussion with those people when they are looking at it from that angle and you are looking at it from a Buddhist angle.
Some things are better just to leave alone, as misinformation can cause more harm than good in tryin to explain such things to people who are not ready.
@karasti this is true but at least you can show these people the spark of the dharma. Their choice whether they light the fire or not. They may be ready
KIa Ora,
I posted this before, but I can't remember where...This explains what the ego is (well my ego's happy with this definition)...
"One is simply one's experience.
One ego is the abstraction from these experiences.
Ones ego should be viewed as a convenient analytic device !"
Metta Shoshin .
..
Hey Grace your ego mind is an exact reflection of the real you, you are what ever your thinking & doing....& your mind is never making you do any of the bad things you do, that's if you do any like bad habits etc....A 100% fact for you is that if anyone really wanted to conquer their own egoic minds hold over their thinking, they will have to give up all of their bad habits asap....The I'd ego & super ego are all just the same thing their you, & their is just "one" you the one that your here building....Am i "the one" or do i have any sort of egoic mind thoughts/suggestions/influences, that i haven't shed yet?.... :-)
Ego=> @gracelee said:
@ Gracelee
Why not just speak of what your meditation demonstrates it to be?
Oh no. Nothing there . . .
Personally I think of ego in terms of individual experience in time and space. In other words it is the sense of separate uniqueness.
In time and given sufficient space, we might encompass more or let go of that more. Still however we have a unique placement.
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In my humble opinion, that's far from helpful. If a person's never heard of 'ego' trying to explain it in terms of self-discovery through meditation is just going to compound the confusion, not clear it....
Think of what is inside a bubble. Imagine that whatever is inside the bubble thinks it is separate from the rest. What happens to whatever is in the bubble when that thin veil breaks?
All I said was "Why not just speak of what your meditation demonstrates it to be?"
There are two folks in the op's opening scenerio.
There is the person who has never heard of the concept of an Ego. (ever met such a person?)
And there is Gracelee (veteran) who has been subjected to countless postings on endless variations of the ego here since 2010. (and no I am not criticizing them for asking for input)
My reason for saying, Why not let your practice answer this question... was..
The most believable explanation of ego comes from ones personal illumination of it from the objective perspective of a meditation practice, not from what they have read.
All the Buddhas's teachings that we have ever read mean different things to us at different times. The difference in our comprehension from reading about a Buddhist teaching when we started and where we are now has little to do with the scriptures which don't change but is instead with the deepening of our own personal meditative experience of them.
If you wish to address all the potential variables when conversing to another person about the ego , better to do it from a position of what you have experienced than from a rote of what other folks have told you.
and the number one rule in discussing ego accords with how well the speaker can demonstrate what leaving their own ego out of the conversation actually looks like.
They iz people without Google and internet? :bawl: .
Existenz sure is suffering . . . especially for the destitute . . . does this person heard of 'books' (like Kindle or ipad but thicker) :crazy: .