by O.Grimstad

Created on: January 20, 2009   Last Updated: February 26, 2010

The term "ego" is used and abused in various contexts, from philosophy and psychology to gossip and curses. First of all we need to clarify what we're talking about. A representative definition from a dictionary is: "the "I" or self of any person; a person as thinking, feeling, and willing, and distinguishing itself from the selves of others and from objects of its thought." In other words the ego is the experienced self as distinguished from its objectified world.

Buddhists tend to see the ego as an illusory cause of suffering. By identifying with our egos we easily feel bad when its external world is not pleasant it or good when it is. Such feelings reinforce the identification with the ego in a cycle of craving. We're like addicts always in search for another fix. Even what feels good to the ego one moment will sooner or later lead to suffering in a world of constant change. The Buddhist advice and solution is to wake up from the illusory bondage of the ego. The awakened Buddha experiences himself as nothing and everything. In other words, he does not experience himself as a thing or ego distinguished from its objectified world. When looking for a self internally he finds nothing, which is everything externally. The paralell for the Hindus is seeing the infinite Brahman as the inner and truest self as opposed to the ego created by Maya's illusions.

The Buddhist identification with nothingness and Hindu identification with Brahman are seen as identical with unconditional love as well as any term of the unmanifest, unborn, absolute, infinite, transcendent principle immanent in all form. The battle between identification with the worldly ego and the transcendent self is the underlying theme of most religious dramas. The heroic masters inherit and realize the qualities of the transcendent principle or deity, with a message of hope and salvation to the world.

Is the ego good for anything? I remember a Buddhist telling about fellow Buddhists who were in such an egoless state that they did not know where to put the spoon when trying to eat. Obviously we need the ego for feeding and taking care of our bodies. The problem is that it hypnotizes us into experiencing reality from a very narrow and exclusive point of view. The ego sees itself separate from everything else. Even though revealing this illusion is mainly an introspective task we also know from modern science that it's only an appearance hiding underlying connections . We experience signals in our brains

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