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Shedding the Ego Away
Joshua
Veteran
When I first joined these forums I was under the impression that you must strive to eliminate the ego. That is also very nihilistic and not cohesive with the middle-way. I've also been told otherwise, that the goal isn't to strip away the ego. So I'm asking if anybody could please inform me of the ego's relationship with enlightenment?
Thank you
Thank you
0
Comments
The ego is not a mystic gremlin that foils us. Though if it helps by all means think that way! Usually it doesn't help in all circumstance especially in the case of despair.
Ego is a thought just like 'girls with blond hair are more sexy'... It is even deeper thought.. You can imagine if you like blonds. Ok I can't think of good example now.
I suggest reading Thanissaro Bhikkhu's essay, "The Problem Of Egolessness (PDF)," for one perspective.
I heard an example quite simliar to that ;o
But I agree with you.
We are not separate by essence, only by accident of inhabiting different bodies. Therefore, the fewer constructs and feelings of separation we have from our brothers and sisters the lesser our egos swell.
The problem is, the general can be kind of an authoritarian jerk a lot of time.
Over the years, we begin to completely identify with this general, who may be useful at times but can also be highly destructive.
The process of meditation allows us to recognize a self/mind that is beyond/different than this general, something deeper, more universal.
I don't think we can or should try to destroy this general. Maybe tame him/her, and also realize his/her authority is not complete.
*beams with pride*
Has anyone here ever seen the movie "Aguirre, The Wrath of God"? It's been a while, but it's an incredible film by Werner Herzog starring Klaus Kinski as a Spanish conquistador in Peru in the 1500s (he may be Pizarro; can't recall).
Anyway, this conquistador is a deeply sick, greed crazed, violent man. Pushing ever deeper into Peru for gold, stopping at nothing. Essentially, he leads his group of soldiers into ruin.
Not to spoil it, but at the end, the remnants of the group are on a raft, dying of heat, thirst, hunger, predation. And Klaus Kinski is the only one keeping them alive and together.
In essence, the film seems to show how destructive this rapacious, amoral type is - and yet, and yet, in the darkest moments you need their endless will to live and push on and keep things together.
This is an extension of the ego-as-general metaphor. The fact is, in life we need that executive function sometimes. Dissolving entirely into the stream sounds appealing but for most of us, we need the general - at times.
Freud defined the ego as that part of the mind that controlled consciousness; it's a buffer between the passion-driven id and the guilt-ridden super-ego.
Seeing it this way, the ego looks like the good one (or the least worst) of the bunch!
But if we can equate the thing with its function, then perhaps we can map the concepts over to the Buddhist theory of the five skandhas. Since there are five skandhas, the map has some overlap.
We can drop the first skandha, as form is the body, and Freud was concerned with the mind.
The second and third skandhas (feeling and perception) would seem to correlate to the id, as it is that part of Freud's mind which seeks pleasure and sensual gratification. The perception of sensory objects, then, and the discrimination of whether the contact is felt as 'good' or 'bad', and above all, the drive to repeat or avert from contact is to be understood here, as the id.
The fourth skandha is mental formations. Mental formations are that part of our psychophysical being that "puts together" or "creates". Thus, in a sense, it also has a drive. But unlike, the drive of the id, this is a volition to become. And if we place super-ego here, it is a volition to become that which society wishes us to become. It is a controller and a creator.
Finally, the fifth skandha is consciousness, the ego. Consciousness can, above all, be thought of as that which re-cognizes. It is as if consciousness were a meta-perception; i.e. it perceives the other skandhas and re-presents them.
Now that we have (perhaps messily) oriented Freud with the Buddhist theory of the formation of personalty, we can place id, ego, and super-ego on the twelve links of dependent origination.
1) Ignorance and 2) Mental formations we can place under the domain of the super-ego. Ignorance is the misapplication of knowledge from within (from one's own karmic continuum) and the misapplication of knowledge from without (from societal and parental educational conditioning) that results in the creation of our character and mode of psychic being.
3) Consciousness, 4) Name and form, 5) Senses, and 6) Contact are all under the domain of the ego, for all of these are required for one to perceive 7) Feeling, whether it be the feeling of external or internal sensations. Feeling as a skandha, of course, was related to the id above. No one said this exercise was going to be perfect.
Anyway, feeling is a mild mode of id-ness. 8) Craving and 9) Attachment is where the id really assumes its Freudian role.
The final three links are like a mini-map of dependent origination within in the larger map.
10) Becoming is the ripening of the controlling and creative impulses of the super-ego/mental formations, attended as always by ego/consciousness, and modulated by the passionate id/craving.
11) Birth is the end of the ripening and the beginning to decay into 12) aging and death that conditions the repetition of the cycle all over again.
Enlightenment or Nirvana is the cessation of this cycle. It is the dissolving not only of ego, but of id and super-ego also.
This was uglier than I thought it would be. But does it work? Perhaps not perfectly.
Great movie. Great soundtrack. GREAT actor.
I just watched Herzog's Wheel of Time last night. It is a documentary about the Kalachakra initiations. Some of the monks and lay people shown in the movie are just astounding in their dedication.
The id is a dragon at the bottom The ego is in the middle and is a lion. The super ego is a lady.
The super ego trains or calls forth the lion. Then the lion resists the more bestial dragon (or monster whatever) of the id.
Journey, I don't have a freaking clue what the ego is anymore. Everyone helping me, please ignore this.
Nirvana & normalname, thank you for the helpful explanation and metaphor. I'll check the links out later when I have time Nirvana.
upalabhava, yeah ^ no time right now. Like usual your replies require intellectual stimulation which I've no time for right now if I'm to properly reply. Thanks, I always look forward to your posts. Till later today.
Jeffery and all, my knowledge of western psychology is very sketchy. Sometimes I do feel like there's a dragon lurking somewhere in the pits of my mind that I only faintly glimpse but whose nature is suspected through fury and brimstone from time to time, I believe.
Which swings me back to Journey's point..
Could anybody tell me what to look for to figure out contemporary theories of the ego--probably from a western perspective? Or ought I just read some odds and bobs of cliche psychologists on Wiki like I'd have done without any help of y'alls?
Buddhism does not seek to destroy anything except "Ignorance". When reality is seen and comprehended fully as-is, rather than how we would desire it (or have misunderstood it), we come to know there was never an "ego" or "self" to begin with; only wrong thoughts (wrong views).
First, that was an impressive bit of analysis. As other posters point out, none of our constructs to draw the boundaries of the mind are anything but abstracts. In other words, they're not real. They're just one of many ways to describe a complex, ever changing phenomina. Dr. Freud and his Ego/Id/Superego is now seen as pretty much discredited and doesn't fit into the concept of skandhas very well. You've managed to do it better than anyone else I've heard, but as you point out, it still has problems. You've done some skillful pounding of square pegs into round holes.
When pressed in Budddhist boards, I've found people use Ego in its popular definition, not Freud's definition. Ego might be thought of as a sense of pride, of importance, a focus on "Me" to the exclusion of others, if one has too much of it. Or, Ego is just the "I" in "I am".
So does Buddhism say the goal is to eliminate the Ego, in this sense of self-importance? An interesting question.
My first reaction is, how can one eliminate something that doesn't really exist? But, that's just kneejerk Zen talk. Actually, we can. We can elliminate illusions by just looking at them with a clear mind. Also, the opposite of someone thought to have a big Ego, a self-absorbed person, is someone focused on the well being of others. That can describe someone awakened to a life of compassion.
So I guess my own answer is a qualified yes, Buddhism calls for the elimination of an Ego, sort of. To the extent we can define what we do. Unless I'm talking to a Zen master, who would hit me with his stick if I didn't answer "I don't know!" quickly. And in the end, doesn't it say the same thing without a bunch of words?
I agree with your (and Cloud's) point that whatever system of mapping out personality is used, it is an abstraction of very complicated processes. In fact, I would take it a bit further and say that the existential problem that is the concern of Buddhism (and psychology for that matter) is not just the abstraction of these processes but the reification of them; it is the freezing into solidity of these dynamic and fluid processes that is the object of concern, not their abstraction. It is the holding tight to "this is me and mine". Thus, Buddha taught anatman, because in these reified and concretized notions, self-existence (real, solid existence) is not to be found.
I'm sure most of the field of psychology would reject the skandha theory of personality as quickly as they would Freud's theories. This is no matter, though; we should not be reifying the models of personality either, whether the model be one of five skandhas or three-part psyche. The models (even the methods) are but tools to reach the goal; they are to be forgotten once the goal is reached.
It's not exactly contemporary, but I think Husserl's method of phenomenology (epoché) has parallels to Buddhist methods of de-emphasizing "natural" egoic modes of being. The method of epoché or "bracketing" is first an exercise in losing all the assumptions concerning the existence of sense-objects; it is a concentration on the subjective experience of things, and avoids altogether claims of validity or non-validity of the being of things. Husserl's assistant describes the phenomenological method thus,
Buddhist path teaches us to observe the ego with a detached view - seeing through that false identification.
I'm trying to read a large backed up stock-pile of things I've collected, so I've just gotten to this. In succinct, this was profound and fully answered my question.
..
I have two odd questions that slightly pertain to this thread and slightly to the nature of kamma. These are:
1. How would one analyse the ego of Thích Quảng Đức's burning at Saigon?
2. Considering the idea of a 'healthily developed ego' as opposed to 'egolessness' as I've just read, how ought I best deal with my best friend and roommate's annoying and oblivious habits like making pig sounds when he eats or my relentless desire to be fair and ration compared to his extreme who gives a fuck attitude or my modesty compared to his flauntiness? I either deal with them with anger or a sense of 'fine, I'll be better than you and say nothing while trying to rid my ego of the mere concern'?
Next time you are upset by his behavior, instead of thinking how wrong he is, try to see why is he acting the way he is and why is your reaction negative. Try to see it as deeply as you can. It might give you some answers.
All the best. :-)
I too am still very much ignorant and trying to help another ignorant one. xD
If you will be saying things like 'you should not do that', then no. I would not recommend that. It will only make him feel bad. He would most likely just take it as an attack towards him.
But if you have something to say, that 'comes from the heart' and is really kind and compassionate, then why not.
Try not to take his behavior so seriously. Let him be as he is. The best you can do is to be a role model with your own wise behavior. That doesn't mean that you should try to act a certain way when interacting with him. It means that you should keep practicing, so your natural wise behavior becomes more dominant.
Would you imagine Buddha getting annoyed with his behavior? If not, then why?
Perhaps we can interpret his self-immolation in the light of one of the Jatakas.
Of all things is most fine:
I sacrificed a mortal eye; and giving,
Received an eye divine.</small>
The contemplative life is a rough life indeed.
being,
*sigh*.
Like I said, I am prone to obsessively rationing things or trying to be exactingly fair.
The context is, I live with my girlfriend, my bestfriend and his girlfriend. None of us have jobs and live through the help of nice people who seem to not care that we've withdrawn from society. I get half my food from churches and food pantries. Therefore it's necessary to ration it to be fair, it's easy to screw someone over. My friend certainly screws no one over on purpose, but is my counting the ladle-fulls of soup per bowl and trying to make sure the goodies that sank at the bottom of the pan or wok are properly rationed worth it? Is that extra 1 or 2 minutes of bullshit after cooking what makes my ego on the path toward development? Trying to use as little toilet paper as possible to wipe my ass or small amounts of toothpaste or shampoo? Or is this too extreme? Or is it conducive towards right view?
Methinks a lot of the work in figuring it out will be yours alone, my friend.
With Metta,
Todd
With Metta,
Todd
I don't mean to be vague, but the distinctions are a little hard to grasp conceptually. The understanding tends to dawn slowly as you meditate and apply your practice to daily living. Your ego remains ... what fades away is the ability of your ego to "grab" onto you, to "shake" you, to "hold" you. This is the natural result of coming to understand your true nature and of learning to open up to everything, both that which is within you and that which is without you. It cannot be artificially rushed. First you grasp in conceptually, but don't apply it ... then you start to apply it, and the more you can do that, the more you actually start to understand it. Patience is one of the first things a Buddhist must learn.