"Egocide"....
Shoshin
No one in particularNowhere Special Veteran
Somewhat ironic to think that if it wasn't for my ego I might never have stumbled upon the Dharma... "When the ego is ready the teacher will appear" And now all I do is look for ways to starve it to death..."Egocidal" Go figure 
Now wait on ! Why would "I" want to get rid of/reduce the sense of "my self" ?
If I got rid of my self where would this leave 'me'?
Who would be left to practice the Dharma ?
Well thanks for nothing ego...
Did you stumble upon the Dharma through your ego's cravings ?
Or were some of you already experiencing egolessness to start with ?(and was just wanted to pursue it further)
Are we trying to do away with the ego?
Or just ones unhealthy attachment to it ?
Or do so at your own risk..."I" accept no responsibility whatsoever....
Comments
I stumbled into Buddhism by some karma and I've dived head first into it. I have been looking for myself. I know this is my calling in this life.
Nothing else compares.
I think the ego doesn't have to be annihilated, because the mere intention of getting rid of the ego is the ego.
You need the ego to want to find enlightenment, but once you stop being the ego and just be aware you can observe it.
Then it becomes YOU observing ego. So you don't have to get rid of it. It's not real anyway. It's a belief. A concept.
I can feel my sense of self is weakening, especially when observing the ego. It becomes alien to me. Like watching someone else's life.
Mooji says that the you can't obtain freedom for the ego. Only freedom from the ego.
He also says the one looking for enlightenment will be burnt in the searching.
I have no doubts the source of all problems is the ego. It's from this clinging arises.
Funny this existence right?
@Shoshin
I think that the Dharma is just the path towards egolessness.
The Ego, whether seen as good or bad,
is simply the dream the Buddha exhorted his followers
to awaken from.
getting rid of the Ego isn't the point.
It doesn't need to be got rid of.
More like seeing past it I think.
I read somewhere the ego is fear-based, always looking for approval. How wonderful to live a life free from ego. ☺️
I think it relevant at this point that people determine what they think 'ego' is.....
The ego is playing endless games with the other egos, because a human being is a social animal. The ego wants a bigger house, a bigger car, a bigger salary, and above all: a higher social status. You can't find an egoless place in this human World. Especially avoid social media where people play their endless games.
Thanissaro Bhikkhu has another viewpoint.
Hang on to your Ego...
I don't know what this ego thing is, but there are 10 fetters that are chaining us to Samsara.
http://slbuddhists.org/inanutshell/10fetters.html
My viewpoint is based onto my own life. No haven in Earth where someone else in this game doesn't want a tiny piece of you to make his/hers ego a bit bigger.
I like Alan Watts take on what the ego is "The ego is nothing other than the focus on conscious attention!"
Which you take to mean.....?
Attachment
So in other words, just verbal diarrhoea.... if he meant Attachment, why didn't he just say so, I wonder.....
feed it what? It depends what you feed it on, as to how it thrives: healthily or otherwise.....
Interesting..but a bit scary for me.
While ego surely has common representation in that way,
to say it is "nothing other than "
is to ignore it's manifestation in the other 4 Skandha's.
Like saying we are only our mentality.
@how really no thing scary about it at all....
I guess in the conventional sense (mundane) it is just that... "nothing other than"
In a deeper sense I take it to mean he was saying that when all our focus (Skandhas) is upon something ( example = a sense of self also attached ) that's the ego at work....
But I'm also aware of contradictions that arise as they often do when having to use the ego to try to describe the ego in simple layperson's term...(The ego won't have a bar of it.
)
When I use the word "Ego", it describes all personifications of ignorance.
That Ego represents selfishness
where
the absence of Ego is selflessness..
While some forms of Buddhism do express ego in terms of good/ bad/ helpful & unhelpful company, I have not felt secure enough in my practice to continue carrying any portion of it further along than whenever my skill allows me to leave it behind.
If Zen was not my practice, the fetters would work OK for me.
How would you describe a healthy ego ?
"Shit happens!" and if it didn't we might all be full of it....
If one thinks about it... The "attachment" to passed encounters/experiences more often than not linger on (ego could be seen as the abstraction from these experiences) and ones ego can bring them back to the forefront ("the focus on conscious attention!") in whatever form they might take ie "anger" "resentment" "frustration" "righteousness" and when this occurs the ego has truly landed...
Aha the many mind games we play with our selves....
As in this is MY body, This is MY mind.
That MY, the owner, can not be found. Because it doesn't exist.
The people @federica who say this. From your link.
egolessness would be a disaster. A person devoid of ego functions would be self-destructive: either a beast with uncontrolled impulses, or a neurotic, repressed automaton with no mind of her own, or an infantile monster thrashing erratically between these two extremes"
Has this person ever experienced life with no ego?
I am going to firmly say they haven't. They are commenting on something they no nothing about and likely will never know because of this opinion. This belief will keep people fearful from having absence if ego. Which will keep them trapped. How can anyone let go if they think they are a person?
The ego is a mass of constant changing thoughts, the problem is we believe that is us.
When we were seven, we liked this thing, when we were 15 we wanted that thing. When we were twenty we believed in this thing...
Always changing, always impermanent. How can we be this?
Here's a test that helped me a lot, if I am the ego. Command all your thoughts to stop?
You can't. You'll find that out quickly. Sitting there watching thoughts and watching the body you realise you have no control over what's happening. You can watch you ego manifest and make judgments about people.
Then the question, what watches ego?
Suddenly you will be in pure awareness.
Exactly. Great link @federica many thanks.
An unbalanced, humourless, ultra spiritual, Buddhist ego is no substitute for an enlightened ego aka Buddha Nature.
That is why we attune and resonate with a skilfull ego, even though in some senses it is empty (not absent or void). You knew that . . . [lobster goes back in the naughty corner for stating the bleeding obvious]
"Just like a red, blue, or white lotus — born in the water, grown in the water, rising up above the water — stands unsmeared by the water, in the same way I — born in the world, grown in the world, having overcome the world — live unsmeared by the world. Remember me, brahman, as 'awakened.'
--Dona Sutta
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an04/an04.036.than.html
What says "I" and "me" other than ego?
To me, this quote implies that an ego awakened is an ego that accepts and is fine with its own impermanence as well as its usefulness.
"Remember me, brahman, as 'awakened'".
What did your last slave die of ?
They just woke up and so now they can't tie their own shoes, let alone mine.
Consciousness. = I Am
The knowing you exist without adding anything else on the end.
Forgive my formatting as the quote feature is on the fritz again.
"When I use the word "Ego", it describes all personifications of ignorance.
That Ego represents selfishness
where
the absence of Ego is selflessness.."
_____________________________________
I can see your definition of ego working in context of riddance but I always figured the ego is the expression of our individual self, for good or ill.
For example, that which expresses selflessness would still be ego/individual self.
Our ego doesn't have to be a curse. It's taken a long time (relatively, of course) to evolve and progress towards awareness but the absolute has no witness to explore itself without the relative.
No brain, no pain and yet, here we are...
Perhaps some pain is worth some awakening... Not sure on that though.
So why did Buddha add something else on the end?
" I — born in the world, grown in the world, having overcome the world — live unsmeared by the world".
From the same source;
"The fermentations by which I would go
to a deva-state,
or become a gandhabba in the sky,
or go to a yakkha-state & human-state:
Those have been destroyed by me,
ruined, their stems removed.
Like a blue lotus, rising up,
unsmeared by water,
unsmeared am I by the world,
and so, brahman,
I'm awake."
If he spoke English he may have said, I am not a human being, I am being human.
Just as if I am walking I still cannot be defined as a walker. As soon as I stop walking, there is no walker.
Words are funny and nouns are misleading.
When one knows they should be meditating but procrastinates instead, is this the work of the ego ? "I"ll do it another time..."I"ve got better things to do!"
Is it also the ego that generates the feelings of guilty ?
That sounds more like mindfulness? I think ego is more like self-view.
Brahman is universal self, so if he was awake to this then he is beyond words. Beyond ego...
He had to teach what can not be taught.
You could always interpret what he said in so many different ways.
Your right it's hard, language is so binding!
"Ego" in psychology and different philosophies is another endless rhetorical game. And a debate of two egocentric egos with different views is like a debate of Archie and Meathead.
In that sutta he didn't mean Brahman as in the universal self, he was talking to a brahman (advanced yogi) named Dona that mistook him for a deva/god.
I don't know if that changes anything for you.
In my view, if Buddha woke up to Brahman, Brahman would not be Brahman but nameless and un-nameable.