Oakville Zen Meditation
EGO Part 2 Ego : A schizophrenic beast. The good and the bad.
Contrary to what most people think, Zen is not trying to eliminate the ego from our life.
It does not make any sense.
Being non-dualistic, or trying to be, Zen sees the ego as a critical component of our identity, but, as the paintings of Janus the Roman God, our ego has 2 opposite faces: the smiling good one and the bad one.
We know the good ego but we minimize the bad that is being the main source of our sufferings
which include all our “ negativities” .
The Buddhist term is “Dukkha” meaning dissatisfaction, unease, uncertainty, and pain of all sorts.
He spent 50 years teaching Dukkha, its causes and how to deal with it.
The main root of Dukkha (Suffering) is our ego.
Beside external causes causing suffering, our ego is the primary factory of suffering.
How come?
Because I, me, myself, mine, - that is the ego - strongly believes to be an unique, separate, independent, self-sustained entity from the rest of the world; because of this delusion, our lives in a constant subconscious state of emotional insecurity.
To survive, our ego relies on 3 main mechanisms:
1- Desire/ graving, clinging, attachments or : “I want”
Trying to get or hold into situations, things and people that make us happier, and more secure,
our ego is always searching for control, status, comfort, power, success, recognition, validation, pleasure, happiness, and beliefs).
There is no end to this search.
2- Aversion / Resistance: or “I don’t want”
On the other hand, our ego is pushing away things that threaten our identity, independence, success, comfort, achievements, statu-quo, opinions, etc.
3- Illusion, ignorance, delusion, beliefs, judgments:
Our ego is controlling most of our automatic Default Mental Network that is ongoing “ self- centered compulsory daydreaming”. The DMN is a great source of unhappiness, dissatisfaction, anxiety, and regrets.
What to do?
I will elaborate further in the next Dharma talk; in the mean time:
Remember that 1)the universe is inherently impermanent (Anicca), and 2) that we do not have too much control on it nor on our own life even if we think otherwise.
….and yet, our ego’s attempt to ignore / resist/ modify geunine realities of life is a losing battle
which will last til the end.
Therefore, this friction between how things, people, events actually are and how our ego wants them to be is the #1 source of our emotional negativities such as pain, not having, anxiety, anger, discontentment, grief, fear, jealousy, and many more.
Being mindful of who is behind our thinking, our emotions, and actions is critical because, too often,
the ego is behind either for the good and for the bad.
Acting accordindly such as awareness, acceptance, and letting go will minimize suffering
w/o eliminating totally.
