Enlightenment: The Ego, what is it? How to transcend it.

[another bob]

Posted by Jenci (here)

Can you, the Perceiver, be seen?
If I only had one question, I would ask you this, and I will keep asking you this.
It is so potent a question that you could forget everything else you have ever heard or studied, and it would lead you Home.

“Let me remind you that the perceived cannot perceive.”

~Huang Po


Blessings!

[Jenci]

Posted by another bob (here)

Posted by Jenci (here)

Can you, the Perceiver, be seen?
If I only had one question, I would ask you this, and I will keep asking you this.
It is so potent a question that you could forget everything else you have ever heard or studied, and it would lead you Home.

“Let me remind you that the perceived cannot perceive.”

~Huang Po


Blessings!

I've watched Mooji a few times on video ask this question, Can the perceiver be seen?
I've watched impatiently waiting for him to answer. He never did, lol

So it's still my question.

Jeanette

[greybeard]

Quick, hand me a mirror some one.
The perceived and the perceiver are one.

Chris

[Jenci]

The witness is a reflection of the real in the mind.
The real is beyond.
The witness is a door through which you pass beyond.


Sri Nisargatta Maharaj


Jeanette

[another bob]

Posted by Jenci (here)
The witness is a reflection of the real in the mind.
The real is beyond.
The witness is a door through which you pass beyond.


Sri Nisargatta Maharaj


Jeanette

When no discriminating thoughts arise,
the old mind ceases to exist.

When thought objects vanish,
the thinking-subject vanishes,
as when the mind vanishes,
objects vanish.

Things are objects because of the subject (mind);
the mind (subject) is such because of things (object).

Understand the relativity of these two
and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness.

In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable
and each contains in itself the whole world.

Hsing Hsing Ming,
Seng-ts'an

Blessings!

[Ernie Nemeth]

Reality abhors a vacuum...

[Jenci]

by Elizabeth Barratt Browning

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries

Jeanette

[starsha]

“Not all spiritual paths lead to the Harmonious Oneness.
Indeed, most are detours and distractions, nothing more.”
- Lao Tzu from the Hua Hu Ching

[another bob]

Posted by starsha (here)
“Not all spiritual paths lead to the Harmonious Oneness.
Indeed, most are detours and distractions, nothing more.”
- Lao Tzu from the Hua Hu Ching

Ironically, according to certain Buddhist schools (the Tibetans, for example), Lao Tzu's Taoism would itself be included in the "detours and distractions" category.

[modwiz]

Posted by another bob (here)

Posted by starsha (here)
“Not all spiritual paths lead to the Harmonious Oneness.
Indeed, most are detours and distractions, nothing more.”
- Lao Tzu from the Hua Hu Ching

Ironically, according to certain Buddhist schools (the Tibetans, for example), Lao Tzu's Taoism would itself be included in the "detours and distractions" category.

It's ironic how irony works. Iddn't it?

[another bob]

Posted by modwiz (here)
It's ironic how irony works. Iddn't it?

Perhaps, but in any case, I've always liked that smilie

Blessings!

[Jenci]

You can only be lost if you are trying to get to some place - Wayne Liquorman

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z9JKky65zT8

source : https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z9JKky65zT8


Jeanette

[alienHunter]

Posted by greybeard (here)
Hi friends
To put it into context.
There are two kinds of ego.
One as defined by the Medical/ Psychiatric profession.
is Healthy self esteem.
It is good to take pride in the way we do things.
When one is comfortable with oneself and what one does then fear decrease and it is easy to be in this world with all its trials and tribulations at that point there is an over lap into the second definition of ego, the spiritual one.

The ego in spiritual terms could be defined as "Edge God Out"
Every spiritual teacher without exception says that to fully know one true self the ego must be transcended.

There were some very good contributions to this thread on Avalon and I hope that the same will apply here.
Celine has said that the complete thread from Avalon will be reposted here but there are technical problems in doing this at the moment, hopefully these will be resolved.
Time being fresh insights are very welcome.
Chris
Namaste.

Here's the flip side...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality

Nothing positive emanates from this type...Does it?

[another bob]

Posted by Jenci (here)
You can only be lost if you are trying to get to some place - Wayne Liquorman

Monk: "What is the one road of [Zen Master] Ummon?"

Ummon: "Personal Experience!"

Monk: "What is the Way?"

Ummon: ""Go!"

Monk: "What is the road, where is the Way?"

Ummon: "Walk on!"


Blessings!

[greybeard]

Hi Alien Hunter
Thanks for your contribution.
You can have a good self esteem without ego being present.
The ego has to exaggerate its own importance--- healthy self esteem is based on a an accurate representation of ones ability.

The ego can be tamed first before transcending happens--- famous Zen oxen pictures.

Chris

[alienHunter]

Posted by greybeard (here)
Hi Alien Hunter
Thanks for your contribution.
You can have a good self esteem without ego being present.
The ego has to exaggerate its own importance--- healthy self esteem is based on a an accurate representation of ones ability.

The ego can be tamed first before transcending happens--- famous Zen oxen pictures.

Chris

Amen, my brother...

[Jenci]

Just do what I say. All your questions are sprouting from your identification with body-form.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ElXlV8cI-ds

source : https://youtube.com/watch?v=ElXlV8cI-ds


Jeanette

[starsha]

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=dibSZ1JNTGs

This guy is just so awesome.

[another bob]

Interbeing

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-” with the verb “to be,” we ha vea new verb, inter-be. Without a cloud and the sheet of paper inter-are.

If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the forest cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. The paper and the sunshine inter-are. And if we continue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And wesee the wheat. We now the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger’s father and mother are in it too. When we look in this way, we see that without all of these things, this sheet of paper cannot exist.

Looking even more deeply, we can see we are in it too. This is not difficult to see, because when we look at a sheet of paper, the sheet of paper is part of our perception. Your mind is in here and mine is also. So we can say that everything is in here with this sheet of paper. You cannot point out one thing that is not here-time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper. That is why I think the word inter-be should be in the dictionary. “To be” is to inter-be. You cannot just be by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.

Suppose we try to return one of the elements to its source. Suppose we return the sunshine to the sun. Do you think that this sheet of paper will be possible? No, without sunshine nothing can be. And if we return the logger to his mother, then we have no sheet of paper either. The fact is that this sheet of paper is made up only of “non-paper elements.” And if we return these non-paper elements to their sources, then there can be no paper at all. Without “non-paper elements,” like mind, logger, sunshine and so on, there will be no paper. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh


Further reading on Dependent Origination:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipit....002.than.html


Blessings!

[another bob]

Not sure if this article has been posted here, but worth reviewing in any case, as per thread topic:

Chogyam Trungpa,
on the Mechanics of Ego Formation,
from "Cosmic Joke"


In order to cut through the ambition of ego, we must understand how we set up me and my territory, how we use our projections as credentials to prove our existence. The source of the effort to confirm our solidity is an uncertainty as to whether or not we exist. Driven by this uncertainty, we seek to prove our own existence by finding a reference point outside ourselves, something with which to have a relationship, something solid to feel separate from. But the whole enterprise is questionable if we really look back and back and back. Perhaps we have perpetrated a gigantic hoax?
The hoax is the sense of the solidity of I and other. This dualistic fixation comes from nothingness. In the beginning there is open space, zero, self-contained, without relationship. But in order to confirm zeroness, we must create one to prove that zero exists. But even that is not enough; we might get stuck with just one and zero. So we begin to advance, venture out and out. We create two to confirm one's existence, and then we go out again and confirm two by three, three by four and so on. We set up a background, a foundation from which we can go on and on to infinity. This is what is called samsara, the continuous vicious cycle of confirmation of existence. One confirmation needs another confirmation needs another ...
The attempt to confirm our solidity is very painful. Constantly we find ourselves suddenly slipping off the edge of a floor which had appeared to extend endlessly. Then we must attempt to save ourselves from death by immediately building an extension to the floor in order to make it appear endless again. We think we are safe on our seemingly solid floor, but then we slip off again and have to build another extension. We do not realize that the whole process is unnecessary, that we do not need a floor to stand on, that we have been building all these floors on the ground level. There was never any danger of falling or need for support. In fact, our occupation of extending the floor to secure our ground is a big joke, the biggest joke of all, a cosmic joke. But we may not find it funny: it may sound like a serious double cross.
To understand more precisely the process of confirming the solidity of I and other, that is, the development of ego, it is helpful to be familiar with the five skandhas, a set of Buddhist concepts which describe ego as a fivestep process.
The first step or skandha, the birth of ego, is called "form" or basic ignorance. We ignore the open, fluid, intelligent quality of space. When a gap or space occurs in our experience of mind, when there is a sudden glimpse of awareness, openness, absence of self, then a suspicion arises: "Suppose I find that there is no solid me? That possibility scares me. I don't want to go into that." That abstract paranoia, the discomfort that something may be wrong, is the source of karmic chain reactions. It is the fear of ultimate confusion and despair.
The fear of the absence of self, of the egoless state, is a constant threat to us. "Suppose it is true, what then? I am afraid to look." We want to maintain some solidity but the only material available with which to work is space, the absence of ego, so we try to solidify or freeze that experience of space. Ignorance in this case is not stupidity, but it is a kind of stubbornness. Suddenly we are bewildered by the discovery of selflessness and do not want to accept it, we want to hold on to something.
Then the next step is the attempt to find a way of occupying ourselves, diverting our attention from our aloneness. The karmic chain reaction begins. Karma is dependent upon the relativity of this and that -my existence and my projections- and karma is continually reborn as we continually try to busy ourselves. In other words, there is a fear of not being confirmed by our projections. One must constantly try to prove that one does exist by feeling one's projections as a solid thing. Feeling the solidity of something seemingly outside you reassures you that you are a solid entity as well. This is the second skandha, "feeling."
In the third stage, ego develops three strategies or impulses with which to relate to its projections: indifference, passion and aggression. These impulses are guided by perception. Perception, in this case, is the self-conscious feeling that you must officially report back to central headquarters what is happening in any given moment. Then you can manipulate each situation by organizing another strategy.
In the strategy of indifference, we numb any sensitive areas that we want to avoid, that we think might hurt us. We put on a suit of armor. The second strategy is passion -trying to grasp things and eat them up. It is a magnetizing process. Usually we do not grasp if we feel rich enough. But whenever there is a feeling of poverty, hunger, impotence, then we reach out, we extend our tentacles and attempt to hold onto something. Aggression, the third strategy, is also based upon the experience of poverty, the feeling that you cannot survive and therefore must ward off anything that threatens your property or food. Moreover, the more aware you are of the possibilities of being threatened, the more desperate your reaction becomes. You try to run faster and faster in order to find a way of feeding or defending yourself. This speeding about is a form of aggression. Aggression, passion, indifference are part of the third skandha, "perception /impulse."
Ignorance, feeling, impulse and perception -all are instinctive processes. We operate a radar system which senses our territory. Yet we cannot establish ego properly without intellect, without the ability to conceptualize and name. By now we have an enormously rich collection of things going on inside us. Since we have so many things happening, we begin to categorize them, putting them into certain pigeon-holes, naming them. We make it official, so to speak. So "intellect" or "concept" is the next stage of ego, the fourth skandha, but even this is not quite enough. We need a very active and efficient mechanism to keep the instinctive and intellectual processes of ego coordinated. That is the last development of ego, the fifth skandha, "consciousness."
Consciousness consists of emotions and irregular thought patterns, all of which taken together form the different fantasy worlds with which we occupy ourselves. These fantasy worlds are referred to in the scriptures as the "six realms." The emotions are the highlights of ego, the generals of ego's army; subconscious thought, daydreams and other thoughts connect one highlight to another. So thoughts form ego's army and are constantly in motion, constantly busy. Our thoughts are neurotic in the sense that they are irregular, changing direction all the time and overlapping one another. We continually jump from one thought to the next, from spiritual thoughts to sexual fantasies to money matters to domestic thoughts and so on. The whole development of the five skandhas-ignorance/form, feeling, impulse/perception, concept and consciousness -is an attempt on our part to shield ourselves from the truth of our insubstantiality.
The practice of meditation is to see the transparency of this shield. But we cannot immediately start dealing with the basic ignorance itself; that would be like trying to push a wall down all at once. If we want to take this wall down, we must take it down brick by brick; we start with immediately available material, a stepping stone. So the practice of meditation starts with the emotions and thoughts, particularly with the thought process.