Path: typhoon.sonic.net!not-for-mail From: nagasiva Newsgroups: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.philosophy.zen,alt.consciousness.mysticism,talk.religion.buddhism Subject: Angelo: Transcending the Ego? Followup-To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.philosophy.zen,alt.consciousness.mysticism,talk.religion.buddhism,alt.religion.buddhism.tibetan,talk.religion.buddhism,alt.zen Organization: Sonoma Interconnect,Santa Rosa,CA(us),http://www.sonic.net Lines: 67 Sender: yronwode@sonic.net Message-ID: <9k70j6$40s@bolt.sonic.net> References: <2a97d28e.0107301822.4789c8d6@posting.google.com> Reply-To: mazda@disinfo.net X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.4 (NOV) Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 19:25:12 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 208.201.224.36 X-Complaints-To: abuse@sonic.net X-Trace: typhoon.sonic.net 996607512 208.201.224.36 (Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:25:12 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:25:12 PDT Xref: typhoon.sonic.net alt.magick.tyagi:28028 alt.philosophy.zen:74185 alt.consciousness.mysticism:50791 talk.religion.buddhism:166118 [from alt.zen: mazda@disinfo.net (Angelo)] odlh90@hotmail.com (frank) wrote in message news:... > I understand that the self is just an illusion and seeing it as such > is a way to transcend it, however, can anyone describe a specific path > one can take in order to fully transcend the ego? Well you got some interesting answers to your question. Rather than argue with them let me start from scratch. The self is not an illusion - the Buddha never says you don't have a self. He does say that the way you think of it and define it is likely to be wrong. Someone mentioned that it is not to be identified with any part of the mundane world - which is how I read it too. So self per se is not an illusion, although we do tend to be deluded about it. However the Buddha also said that your self is your most precious possession eg Going around all the quarters with the mind Not a thing was found dearer than the self In this way the self of everyone is dear to others Therefore one who loves the self should never harm another Samyutta Nikaya I So rather than the self being seen as the bad guy all the time, sometimes the Buddha used it to help us see the benefit of not harming others. From a psychological point of view the ego plays a rather important role in the psyche. If you want to see the effects of egolessness take a walk, not to your local Buddhist temple, but to the local lunatic asylum. Lack of ego results in a severe disruption of the psyche and person without an ego is unlikely to be able to functin very well at all. Autism, the schizoid disorders and Borderline Personality Disorder all result from a disfunction of the ego. A complete lack of ego would it seems result in the total collapse of the psyche. What we need to transcend is not the ego. Ego is a term introduced in 1923 by Freud (well actually by the guys who translated his writings into English, but that's another story). What we need to transcend is sakkaya-ditthi or self view, which is a term introduced by the Buddha about 2500 years ago. This is the idea that our self can be identified with some aspect of mundane existence. For example we might think that our body, or perhaps our mind, is our self, but this would be wrong. These wrong views lead us to the conclusion that we contain some unchanging essence - an atta or self. We do have a self, according to the Buddha, but it is not fixed and unchanging. It is like the rest of existence constantly changing as a result of the tangled web of causes and conditions that make up Reality. This self was later identified with the tathagata-garbha or Buddha Nature, and is often talked about in Zen circle as our True Self. Some would say that even this is a sop to those incorrigible disciples who just have to identify the self with something. Buddhism *is* the specific path to transcending self-views. There are many many excercises in the Buddhist tradition which help us to loosen our identification of our self with the mundane world. That's my two cents worth Angelo -- emailed replies may be posted ----- "sa avidya ya vimuktaye" ----- "that which liberates is ignorance" http://www.luckymojo.com/nagasiva.html hoodoo catalogue: send postal address to catalogues@luckymojo.com