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Destroy the Ego
Thao
Veteran
I have only heard this term in Tibetan Buddhism and Hinduism. Does anyone know exactly what it means? How is it destroyed? What is left afterwards?
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Ego and Self are synonymous, and neither are a real thing separate from mind-body... they are a perception created by mind-body, and perception only. From that perception arises thoughts and actions which bind us in suffering.
Yes, I agree, "destroying the ego" is a seemingly harsh term for destroying ego-clinging.
So destroying the ego is destroying the self. What we currently grasp at as being self is a non virtuous compilation of impure aggregates and from this grasping springs all our sources of misery so it needs to be destroyed delusions has no other function then to harm us. Once this ego/self is removed we are left to see our true Buddhanature which is inseperable from the Emptiness of all phenomena and thus we become free from sorrow,pain,misery,afflictive suffering Free from Samsara, Filled with compassion and wisdom rather then delusion and non virtue.
One of the most important thing to get right from the beginning is that "self" (atman) and "no self" (anatman) are ontological categories, not psychological ones (though it may include the psychological).
"Ego" is a western term that refer to a reified *psychological* self, not ontological. If people misunderstand this point, I think the whole view of Buddhism gets easily skewered.
In one sense, there is no "self" destroy because you never had one (a reified, independent entity called selfhood) to begin with-- the goal is to realise what you never had in the first place.
To realise no-self doesn't mean just "your" self, but all "selves" (other people, animals, trees, rocks, stars, mountains, etc.)-- in other words, the realisation of emptiness is a kind of ontological re-orientation not only towards oneself but also the world.
The problem with "destroying the ego" is that it implies that there really is this reified ego and it should be eliminated, while the rest of the reified world continues on its merry way. That's not the realisation of emptiness-- that's just beating yourself up psychologically.
Very interesting perspective, riverflow. Food for thought. Thank you.
https://riverflow0.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/self-inquiry
As long as one (mis)understands no-self from purely psychological or moral grounds, the most central point of Buddhism, and what makes it so RADICALLY different (as either a religion or philosophy) is entirely missed.
This is not to say that psychology or morals are absent in Buddhism, but that these are rooted in an ontological realisation of no-self.
In the west if a person has no pride they allow people to abuse them verbally and physically. A person with strong self-respect would not even allow a guru to abuse them in any way.
But I understand this term from Hinduism, and I have never seen it work. I know a woman who wanted to be a nun, and the verbal abuse sent her over the edge because she had a low opinion of herself in the first place. She used to go to bed crying and began to feel worthless. She quit.
I know of other disciples who became as abusive as their gurus when their gurus were not in town.
Hinduism believes in the Soul, God, Self are all One. So basically if Ego is translated as Soul, then it cannot be destroyed, so in Hinduism obviously they are not the same.
It is caused by clinging to a sense pleasure, such as the sense pleasure of anger, which we may be addicted to our anger and look for a chance to get angry for example. Pride is also a sense pleasure just as anger.
You are confused, Thao, pride doesn't prevent abuse. You might be proud that you were the gurus favorite play thing. Its totally the contrary, being free from attachments compassion manifests and you would not 'need' to be involved with the guru. You would be less confused in the absence of pride. Pride obscures the clarity of the mind which is needed to see abuse as abuse.
For me, Stephen Batchelor expressed this dichotomy best. He said the "ego" that Buddhism aims to do away with has more to do with one's self-image, one's projections about oneself, which tend to be static. "I'm this or that type of person, I have these faults, I have those talents". When one gives up one's self-image, one is free to be whatever one wants to be, free to create, free to grow and learn from others. Free to stop pretending, or hiding aspects of oneself.
As for the sometimes extreme forms of "destroying the ego" that Tibetan teachers may use, it reminds me of the old ways the Catholics had of having people do extreme penance. The idea was to transform the personality and instill humility and empathy for others. So maybe "destroying the ego", with the methods Milarepa's teacher used on him, for example, is a holdover from medieval times. Such harsh methods aren't necessary, or not in most cases, and as you pointed out, can be counterproductive. They can be damaging.
http://downthecrookedpath-meditation-gurus.blogspot.com/2011/06/abusive-gurus.html
It reminds me of a story I heard not long ago of a 10 year old boy in Germany who called police to complain about forced labour when his mom kept asking him to clean up his room.
It's an exaggerated example, but you know what I mean.
And one must remember, we are not children, but these so-called gurus refer to us as such.
In fact a guru told me that I needed to learn to "roll with the punches," and all I was able to do was fight back, just just stand there and take it.
And @Thao, about the Hindu use of the words for ego/self, I have just started reading an excellent translation of the Gita, and the disctinction between a living being-self (jiva) and eternal Self (Atman) is quite a clear one.
There is always the danger that compassion, unselfishness, humbleness, humility ect, can become the 'new' ego.
One which will prove even more difficult to destroy because that would be such an unreasonable act. (the ego arguing its case)
My advice to you @Thao would be forget about the ego and live by the old Turkish saying:
"If you sleep on the floor, you CAN NOT fall out of bed."
It's also about destroying your misunderstanding as to your "self's" relationship to other people's "selves;" for example, learning that your "self" doesn't have to be at the mercy of other people's "selves" nearly as much as you thought it did.
To imply that "destroying ego" implies some kind of violence is no more accurate that saying "destroying self-doubt" implies violence.
"Ego’s trick is to make us lose sight of our interdependence. That kind of ego-thought gives us a perfect justification to look out only for ourselves. But that is far from the truth. In reality we all depend on each other and we have to help each other. We are connected in a way that is similar to the connections between the parts of your body. If you get a thorn in your foot, your hand will go and take it out. If your foot is suffering from the thorn and your hands say, “I don’t care. I don’t have suffering. It’s the foot that has suffering,” or if the left hand gets a thorn and the right hand says, “I don’t care. It’s you who is suffering, not me,” in the end, the foot will suffer and the hands will suffer. That is how we function."
But one thing is for sure, the ego should be dropped. It is a gradual process, at least for me. I have come a long way in 3 years in this department, but still have further to go, quite far indeed.
@Dakini I like your description, and share your view, and this is a subject I've been working on with myself . I feel I made a bit of a break through today... I know it probably only makes sense to me, since it was about me, but here is how my brain worked it:
I was thinking about my teenage years and how I would have done things differently if I had a chance... I had to remind myself that to be in the present, I should contemplate more on what I'm experiencing now, and less on the past. Before I left that thought though, I realized that I was viewing myself as a teenager from a 3rd person view, like a camera high above the street... it made myself as the teenager seem so impersonal, just like anyone else. So I tried to bring that 3rd person view to myself at the present, and it made me feel different, like I was just like everyone else... perhaps some cosmetic genetic differences, but functionally, mentally and physically, just like everyone else, in the same way as the tree next to me or the mongoose running across the road in front of me. This made it easier to break down WHAT we are... the question of WHO we are (the ego) seemed irrelevant at this point, and I thought about how evolution had dispersed life across this earth, which may seem so vastly different to each other, but not so much considering that we all came from the same chemical reaction that happened on earth millions of years ago. And these chemicals came from the earth which share it's origins with the whole universe. And the millions of years of evolution may seem like a long time from our perspective, but in the perspective of the universe, it's just a flash.
Sorry about the rambling, but yes, it's something I'm working on as well, and I'm sure there are so many different ways to work this out, but for today, this worked for me.
To add, I find it inspiring and a help at least to me to realize that every act of crime, every war, every act of violence is due to the ego.
Good point
The way I see it, the ego with which we identify as a personality with a certain momentum to it, is not something to destroy at all. Might fry your brain with drugs.
What we are is NO-THING. The "I AM" that we sense is what we are. BUT! The ego structure is there to help one make sense of the vantage point we have access to within consciousness. It's our very own troubleshooter and problem solver.It's the survival mechanism developed by the child to adapt to SOCIETY.
As such, it's not someone to do away with. It is what enabled us to acquire conventional wisdom and is something one should honor even after enlightenment.
I think a lot of buddhists advise people to detach from their suffering without bearing in mind the ego structure is there to help us heal the whole world from bad karma. If we accept responsibility for all of the ego's problems and heal them without blame, then everything is working fine.
The assumption that the ego is by it's very nature selfish is stupid.The ego has no inherent qualities. It's an amalgam of whatever we identify with as ours.
In reality we are not fixed, unchanging, separate selves but rather we are a part of ever changing flow of life. With no beginning and no end.
Let go of any fixed, ego-delineated view of ourselves. Give up our attachment to the illusion that there is a real, final and definitive boundary between ourselves and everything else. False self and resulting dualistic view of life can then be replaced with peace and gratitude for all that is.