I am having a online discussion with a beginning Buddhist about egoism... most buddhists aren’t very egoistically inclined but he was one of the few who had decided before getting into Buddhism to choose for himself, and had found that that got a lot of things done for himself. He experienced it as a positive, and was wondering what Buddhism had to say about egoism.
Now if you want to talk advaita, there is a lot to say about the problem of the ego. I recall from my reading of Papaji that he talked a fair amount to people who came to his satsangs about it, but I was a little bit hard-pressed to find a lot of references in the dharma to egoism, so the chat wandered a bit.
In the end what I arrived at was that ego as such is largely an illusion, there isn’t such a thing as a little man in your head pulling the strings telling you to be selfish. Instead there are certain primal desires, such as ‘I am hungry and I want food’, which can get connected to the ‘I want more’ instinct, and that greediness creates what we call egoism. So at its root it comes back to desire, one of the Three Poisons which generate samsara.
But perhaps someone here has something sensible to add to our little chat. Would love to hear your take, which I will shamelessly pass on to the poor chap as wisdom from the elders.
Comments
"One is simply one's experience. One's ego is the abstraction from these experiences. One's ego should be viewed as a convenient analytic device "
Thus have "I" heard...
I'd say this predominately relates to the Buddha's teachings on not-self and the process of I-making and my-making. And it reminds me of something I posted in relation to another thread about identity from Thanissaro Bhikkhu:
The ego has its place, but egoism isn't skillful from the Buddhist POV. For a more detailed look at this, see Thanissaro Bhikkhu's Selves & Not-self.
~ Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
@Kerome
Three points that I think are important to consider when speaking of the ego are...
Don't have as description of the ego leave someone thinking that because it is only an illusion, that it is somehow not also real. The effects of that illusion are as real as it can get.
Is this teaching about a withdrawing of ones habituated support for our ego's maintenance and is it just trying to give an ego a more acceptable makeover.
Is such talk addressing sufferings true cause or just a compounding of it.
Where a teaching on the ego offers a suffering man an explanation for his sufferings, a meditation on the ego offers that suffering man the means of manifesting it's cessation.
I think suffering is a key aspect here, because egoism is damaging for the people around the one manifesting his ego, and only in a subtle way for the person himself. If you really want to decrease suffering for everybody it is something that needs to be tackled. But that I think comes when you seriously want to devote time and energy to making the world better.
I’ve passed on most of the points made above, and also mentioned that the Buddha often spoke positively on the topic of generosity, which is a counterpoint to egoism.
He might find Jordan Hall's notion of sovereignty interesting.
https://medium.com/deep-code/on-jordan-peterson-and-the-future-51402a370d79
Let us say we are controlled by our bodies drives, our narcissistic sovereignty and opinions. Insanity, drugs, useless gurus or love for a pet chicken that can not cross a road without corn to peck. What our eyes devour, our stomach craves, our senses are overwhelmed by.
etc etc etc
All that continuous shit is not the real shit, it just continually happens and gives a sense of constantly being something.
However underneath and in and with all those experiences there is a Free Being. And it does not move, come or go, change or remain static.
The Buddha called it enlightened and so it is ...