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Meditation on the illusory nature of self - where are you EGO?
anataman
Who needs a title?Where am I? Veteran
in Meditation
No matter how many times I investigate my idealogical self I conclude that 'I' does not actually exist. Buddhism, which is the path of liberation from suffering guides us with the 4NT's. And the conclusions are sound and in my opinion - irrefutable. I inevitably find myself in a position, however, where 'I", the symbol of me in the world that I project fails to disappear or be removed. Have any of you completely eliminated your self, AKA Ego, and if you did, what was left, or not right?
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Comments
It sounds like a neat trick or a sales pitch -- eliminating what never existed from the get-go.
Exactly @genkaku - but can you eliminate it?
Yes but do you not feel buffeted by the 8 worldly winds?
@anataman -- No where that I know of does Buddhism suggest "eliminating" the ego. Buddhism does not say "there is no ego." It says there is no abiding ego.
If I have got this much right, then, to answer your question, I think the only option would be to shoot yourself in the head. And even that would not be a guaranteed winner since no one knows what happens after death.
It sounds to me as if fretting about such things is about on a par with sawing a hole in the sky.
Another neat trick is concluding against a concluder (as fleeting as the concluder is/was)
Without the ideological self there is no way to witness the absolute.
Don't shoot the messenger.
In brief, without being mindful of death, whatever Dharma practices you take up will be merely superficial.
~Milarepa
Better to work on one's greed and anger first. This sense of "I am" isn't going away anytime soon.
The first step is to seclude yourself mentally. Calm your breath. Stop the verbal mindstream. Then halt the process of evaluation and namegiving. Rest in the raw data stream of the senses. If that still becons you back into namegiving and evaluation. Fokus only on the mental faculty excluding the other sense doors. Then try again. In the beginning the moment is short and hardly grabbable.
But of course the sense of self will return after.
Meditation on the illusory nature of self - where are you EGO?
Who wants to know ? (an oldie but a goody)
Seriously and honestly, if this question is approached open heartedly, an opening up happens.
We all just assume we exist in the way we think we do. As people. Or individuals separate from an external world.
When you hear a sound we say, "I hear a sound" but what exactly is that I that hears?
Can you find it apart from the sound?
I is a sense of existing. We delude ourselves thinking we are the body and mind. These things function according to their own causes. You can't stop thoughts and you can't bodily functions. Therefore who is the owner of these?
We say my body is in pain or my mind is cloudy, there however is nobody aside from these.
Answering the OP it is possible to be free from a sense of identity or ego.
What is left is exactly what is here and now but without the owner of every experience.
There is just experiencing.
Don't believe me? Try and find yourself apart from the body or thoughts.
I get heavy resistance from the mind with this inquiry. Even physical nausea. It's a sense of losing everything (yourself) but I know it's just the mind.
L'eggo my Ego?
I have nothing of value to contribute but that is what the title made me think
On a retreat with Lama Tony Duff (who is awesome to meet if you ever had the chance) we talked about what was outside of our senses, the "who" that is sensing and then the "who" that is sensing the who that is sensing and so on. The only thing I could come up with was that there was something else there. But certainly nothing I could define.
I may not understand all of what you just said, but that "Rest in the raw data stream of the senses" stands out. I like it.
If it's undefinable... It must be prior to definitions. The same as being prior to identity.
I might have been a bit vague for the beginner. But if you know your DO I think it is obvious. And it is also more or less impossible to explain otherwise.
Glad some part stuck with you. Hope it helps.
/Victor
Buddhism is not about eliminating the ego: it's about accepting it's impermanent.
Precisely...
"One is simply ones experience- Ones ego is the abstraction from these experiences-Ones ego should be viewed as a convenient analytic device!"
so you are saying that experience is a 'one'?
Experience is experience @Jeffrey... "not two"
If there is no I, then there is no desire. If there is no desire there is no suffering. If there is no suffering you are free.
I think this is why there are only a handful of enlightened beings in the world. The strongest attachment in the world is to ourselves. Who can let themselves die before they die?
There is still functioning without the ego. I'm sure there are others here who have come to this realisation?
I think @Shoshin that it may be impossible to express with words. I was just reacting to the idea that there is experience that belongs to 'one'. (not oneness I mean someone or something that can have belongings)
There's no permanent ego, there's no independent ego, no abiding ego, but the stress is on self-restraint, curbing, avoidance of extremes.
If anything, releasing of craving, forsaking ignorance, right understanding.
"With self well-controlled, another master is hard to find" is written in the "Self" chapter in the Dhammapada.
You say there is only a handful of enlightened beings in the world and suggest they function without an ego or the sense of an individual self.
I ask you to think of any two of them and see if they dress the same with the same mannerisms... Do they have the same tendencies and the same interests? Do they use the same words or have the exact same interpretation of all aspects of the dharma?
The Buddha is not Borg
More from papaji
Who has declared them enlightened?
What is a life without ego like?
Do you clock in for work? Do you have a girlfriend? Do you get married? Change your baby's diapers?
@DhammaDragon there appears to be a few in many different religions. Sometimes they talk about their own enlightenment. Sadhguru describes his awakening for instance. They don't tend to talk about it often. More pointing others to see the same thing. They all point to the same thing.
I haven't fully experienced life without the ego as a complete cessation. Only partially. I wasn't the body or mind anymore.
Imagine watching the tv show of your life. The biggest 3d tv show you could experience.
No matter what happens in the show your just observing. Whether good or bad. Makes no difference.
You can observe the person and the functioning of thoughts yet you know it's not you. As close to a description as I can muster
Of course I go to work, I'm married, have a mortgage. Do dishes. Haha.
When I had the first experience I had to go to work straight after. Functioning still takes place. There is a person at work talking to "others" yet you are observing both.
Imagine just for a second you are not @DhammaDragon but pure awareness of her life. Do diapers still get changed? Of course you are just awareness.
But do you need an ego? No because it never existed. It's just thoughts.
Say there is no ego, no I. Can there be suffering? Ask yourself this question honestly
How can they be the same person and yet wear different clothes and have different preferences?
They are not the same person anymore than you and I are the same person. We are all a part of the same process and perhaps even more than kin but not the same person because we are not even the same person we were yesterday.
I understand you want to end suffering but trying to deny that which makes you unique will only add to our suffering for that which makes you unique is also what makes you useful.
If everybody had the exact same mind-set there would only be one way to look at anything.
If two heads are better than one we've hit the jackpot.
There is nothing wrong with being temporary.
It seems to me they would still not be the same person because they appeal to different types of people as a teacher. If they were all the same, they would attract the same students but that rarely seems to be the case.
But at that risk, if we dissolve the self then what is aware? Awareness is a quality I think, not an entity unto itself.
I agree there can be no suffering without a self but there can also be no discovery.
"I am a clone, I am not alone, every fiber of my flesh and bone is identical to the others.
Everything I say is in the same tone as my test tube brothers voice
There is no choice between us
If you had ever seen us
You'd rejoice in your uniqueness
And consider every weakness
Something special of your own
Being a clone, I have no flaws to identify
Even this doggerel that flows from my pen
Has just been written by twenty other telepathic men oh, word for word it says;
"Oh for the wings of any bird other than a battery hen"
That's the spirit of the age.
-- Hawkwind
An ordinary person even if a Buddha is right next to them they cannot see the Buddha. I think people who saw shakyamuni could not really see him until they had teachings from him and got to enough understanding to really see him. http://www.kagyu.org/kagyulineage/buddhism/cul/cul02.php
Umm I'll try again, they are both the one consciousness. But express themselves uniquely. They know this.
That which makes me unique is conditioning. My beliefs, goals etc... It's all inherited.
What were your goals at 5 years of age? What were your aspirations as a teenager?
What were your beliefs at 20?
It's all changing ...
That's our fundamental nature. Our egos jump around liking this and that. Yet there is awareness of this.
See, I pretty much see it the same way but I wonder if that isn't assigning a permanent self to the flow. I find a loophole in that the flow is still ever-flowing and so couldn't be considered permanent even if it is eternal.
Still...
Flowing takes place within it yet it doesn't flow.
I haven't experienced this however
I've heard descriptions of undying, unmanifested and unborn. Timeless ever present self. Words are only pointers right.
Traditionally self-view is one of the last things to go. What I mostly do is try to be aware of what it feels like to have self-view, that sense of "me". I find it's most easily observed when craving and aversion are present, and much less obvious in calm meditative states.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetter_(Buddhism)
It's not that you are "pure awareness" that is sometimes oppressed by moments of contracted "selfing"; but rather as pure awareness you are manifesting moments of "selfing" as your current energetic formation.
The ocean doesn't have moments of waves occurring "to" it, instead the ocean is waving. Likewise awareness doesn't have moments of "selfing" occurring to it, but instead awareness is "selfing".
~Jackson Peterson Facebook page
Yes, that's right, I was thinking particularly of mana, the conceit "I am".
The underlying DraftID is required here... not sure anyone will get the ID reference, but anyway, the point is there is no separate ego, it's just an idea. I have made this point before in different ways. We act in a way that suggests there is this a permanent self, but this is just a persona, that we utilise to interact with the world and each other, without it we don't exist in the world in a way we can identify and communicate.
Anyway, I will go back to punching holes in the sky to let my demons out...