Ego and Buddhism are two inseparable terms. Anyone wishing to immerse themselves in Buddhism will find ego as one of the first themes. Anyone who wants to deepen the ego will find that Buddhism is one of the deepest philosophical and psychological currents. What distinguishes Buddhism from the most well-known religions from ego?The lack of its inherent existence. In other words, according to Buddhism, we would not exist as we seem to exist. Isn’t that interesting?
Much of the Buddhist knowledge aims to dethrone the ego of his position as king. There is a belief that the ego should be destroyed, but that is not entirely true.
- The ego occupies a central position that controls and dominates our lives.
- Buddhism tells us to place you in the position of minister or counselor.
- Is it indisputable that we have names.
- Beliefs.
- Customs? But if the ego dominates us.
- We make it a fixed identity.
- On the other hand.
- If we put it in the right position.
- We are free of conditioning and therefore happier.
Since we were born, our egos begin to develop, everything we are and everything we identify with forms our ego, our name, nationality, belonging to different groups, beliefs, etc. , form our identity, accumulate all this information through our memory and make it our ‘I’. However, Buddhism tells us that this is not entirely safe.
According to Buddhism, ego is the misconception of?I? Like an entity that exists on its own. It’s the idea of the inherent nature of ego. The vision of? I sustained by a spirit that did not understand the concept of empty. What is empety? The lack of existence inherent in all phenomena.
As The Zen Buddhist master Linji says to his disciples: “My friends, make no mistake about it. Not all phenomena, whether worldly or supra-global, have their own nature. All are unborn and therefore mere designations, empty. Names. The expression?simple designation?it’s, in itself, empty, why does it really take the name?If you do, are you wrong?
If you read the concept of vacuum for the first time, you may find it a little complex to understand. Understanding the relationship between ego and Buddhism is an adventure that invites us to discover new terms and change or clarify the meaning of some of us already know them, so let’s talk about ego to better understand these two concepts.
Does the mind define us as anything? (?someone?) bounded by the limits of the body, who nourishes us?belief that “we are in the body”. – Enrique Martinez Lozano-
So where’s my ego? Who am I?
As the Indian sage Shantideva said in the book Bodhisatvacharyavatara: “When ordinary beings perceive phenomena, they consider them real and not illusory. Is that what meditators and ordinary people disagree on?Then, little by little, we approach the most accurate concept of Void and Ego.
If you look at a painting, you can think, “It’s a painting. ” And here two levels of analysis come into play: the relative level and the absolute level. Relatively, we can say yes, we have a table in front of us At the absolute level, the discourse changes. If we look closely at the table, we can start breaking it down: four feet holding a board. If we disarm the table, where will the table be? There will be no table. If we put the pieces together, in theory, we’ll have the table again.
This example shows that all four feet and a table placed and adjusted in a specific position are assigned the identity of the table, but there are still four legs and a table. This simple example applies to the ego. When we perceive ourselves in a static and invariable way, we cling to our ego. Ego and attachment go hand in hand. ” I’m like that,” you hear it several times. This is nothing more than an affirmation of the little awareness of change that we all have.
When we cling to the ego, our iron identity is born and with little chance of change, yet everything changes. When we release the spirit of a static identity, we open ourselves to external changes and circumstances, in this way, the intensity of our suffering decreases.
“If you’re free of any attachment, you don’t feel that something really belongs to you” – Lama Yeshe-
Another important aspect is that selfishness and egocentrism are born of the ego. By perceiving the world from our static ego, we want everything that happens to live up to our expectations, with the ideas we have of what should happen. “I am like that and things should be as I think they should be. “The ego is born of egocentrism. In other words, everything should be like I think it should be. If anything differs from my expectations, I suffer, I get angry, we get angry, etc. Selfishness also appears, that is, on our mind map, we become the Sun, thinking of what surrounds us as elements that revolve around us.
As psychotherapist, sociologist and theologian Enrique MartÃnez Lozano said: “Are the vine and branches, the tree and the branch one or two?A branch can rightly say, “I am a branch, ” and also: “I am a branch. “tree”: they are not one or two; it’s not two. It continues: “Given the inability of the mind to understand the not two, if one desires to achieve non-duality, one must silence the mind, moving since Then do you see that separation is only a mental creation?and that nothing exists apart from nothing.
What does MartÃnez Lozano mean to us? That the ego perceives everything separately: “Me and the rest. “When, in fact, there is no observer, action to observe or observed object. Everything is conscious, but because of our thoughts, we pollute our perception of reality.
In this way, through all our thoughts and conditionings, we perceive the world from an ego that we create little by little, but it is an artificial ego. An ego that does not exist as such, but forms a set of many aspects that also change.
“I look, and things exist, do I think and exist only I?. – Fernando Pessoa-
Antonio Blay said: “There is only one reality. But we do not live it directly, but through the mind, and the mind divides it: when it sees it inside, it calls it “I”; when he sees her on the outside, he calls it the “world”; and when he sees it upstairs he calls it “God. “Faced with this, Martonez Lozano gives us a key: “Try to release the constriction that led you to limit yourself (to reducing yourself) to your mind. What do you do when, instead of thinking, you just pay attention to yourself?Your self was born of the spirit; silence the mind and you will notice how the self dissolves; Was it just a way?
Ego and Buddhism are undoubtedly two concepts that go hand in hand, if we decide to deepen these concepts we will realize a new horizon in our lives, a new way of relating to others, it is therefore a way to get to know each other in a different, innovative and rewarding way.