Distinguishing ego from true self
(Quotations from Sogyal Rinpoche)
Two people have been living in you all your life. One is the ego, garrulous, demanding, hysterical, calculating; the other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to.
…you have uncovered in yourself your own wise guide. Because he or she knows you through and through, since he or she is you, your guide can help you, with increasing clarity and humor, negotiate all the difficulties of your thoughts and emotions…
The more often you listen to this wise guide, the more easily you will be able to change your negative moods yourself, see through them, and even laugh at them for the absurd dramas and ridiculous illusions that they are…
The more you listen, the more guidance you will receive. If you follow the voice of your wise guide… and let the ego fall silent, you come to experience that presence of wisdom and joy and bliss that you really are.
(p. 120-121)
The ego
So ego, then, is the absence of true knowledge of who we really are, together with its result: a doomed clutching on, at all costs, to a cobbled together and makeshift image of ourselves, an inevitably chameleon charlatan self that keeps changing and has to, to keep alive the fiction of its existence… Ego is then defined as incessant movements of grasping at a delusory notion of “I” and “mine,” self and other, and all the concepts, ideas, desires, and activity that will sustain that false construction… The fact that we need to grasp at all and go on and on grasping shows that in the depths of our being we know that the self does not inherently exist…
{The ego’s greatest triumph} is to inveigle us into believing its best interests are our best interests, and even into identifying our very survival with its own. This is a savage irony, considering that ego and its grasping are at the root of all our suffering. Yet ego is so convincing, and we have been its dupe for so long, that the thought that we might ever become egoless terrifies us.
(p. 117)
©1999 by Deb Platt
Ego: a Tibetan Buddhist Perspective
There is no true self-ego
Ego and ownership
What the ego is?
The illusion of ego
A bit of faith
No escape for the ego
Ego on the spiritual path
Is there an eternal soul?
Egolessness
I Me Mine
Don’t defend yourself
Ego Fame and Merit are nothing
Meditation: The Heart of Buddhism
The Middle Path
Drop Ego
Who am I?
The role of ego
Eastern Philosophy
Living in the world is excellent practice
What is the ego?
Fundamentals of Vipassanae Meditation
Nonexistence of Self
Nothing to fear but fear
Observing the problems in our lives
Buddhist Egolessness
The Q talks to Carl Baum
Understanding ego
What is Self?
On ego
Prisoners of Karma