Making War on Ego

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Making War on Ego

There is so much hostility! We talk of "choiceless awareness", attentiveness to experience which is non-judgmentally open to any and whatever mental-physical occurrence. But we still experience dis-pleasures, dis-satisfactions, frustrations.

Perhaps our awareness is keen at these moments. Experience may perceive patterns, in which these frustrations precede later attacks, criticisms, or angry outbursts (in bodily action, word or in thought/ imagination). As is said, frustration leads to aggression.

What happens may be noticed when the frustration-aggression involves us and others, or simply us and ourselves.

Our painful patterns may lead to a desire to have them end (a form of the thirst for extinction, vibhava-tanha spoken of in Buddhist psychology). This sometimes takes the form of a resolution: I won't criticise again. Or as a wish: I wish these petty ego activities were fully stopped. Iconography represents this ego-stoppage by a large central figure holding down a tiny, struggling person by stepping on it firmly.

This is making war on ego. Besides being a manifestation of dualistic thinking, or alienated experience, it nurtures resistance to our process. Rather than learn from the situation, how we ("ego") are functioning, we reject the process and attempt to annihilate or at least fully suppress it.

A resolution often darkens our clarity of perception, so that we do not see the dis-satisfying mechanics. When we cannot see in sufficient detail to dismantle the damaging contraption, we waste energy in our overkill activity: rather than loosening one screw, we try to pulverise steel! So we must be aware of the feeling of resolution which often accompanies the making of a resolution. This is blindness pretending to be perspicacity.

But seeing into the process is difficult when we are militant against it. Hey! Are you still doing that horrible thing!

Now, what kind of a response will that bring about? An open, caring curiosity and love about the "horrible thing", or a self-defensive, strongly identifying with the thing as one's own action?

Say! Now that's worth looking into more! That's important! It can be very freeing to understand how that works better, how each step of that process moves into the next!

We can relate to frustrating patterns in ourselves and in others with either of these two attitudes.

Welcoming in these processes, as opportunities to see what was unseen, to understand what was not understood or was misunderstood, to be clearly aware of what was not in awareness -- this welcoming frees our energies for the function of investigation rather than channelling them into suppressing these processes.

The Buddha did not attempt to kill Mara. He simply saw what Mara, the friend of the deadened, the death-like, was up to. He saw Mara's attempts to distract from awareness. And then Mara was powerless. All this without hostility: Hello, Mara! What are you doing now? Oh, I see.

And then Mara would go away.

Anyway, that's the Buddha and Mara.

With us, maybe we'll see our ego, our desires for love, and security, and self-aggrandisement, and respect, in play (friendly or hostile) with another ego. If we are hostile to these processes of ourselves, we can see that hostility ooze over to the similar proesses of the other. And vice-versa. This hostility may arise from earlier frustrations. When we can see all this, we're not tied into it: at first not so deeply; gradually, not at all.

When we see these processes occurring, we can learn compassion, be compassionate. This ego is a needy thing, but it is ignorant about what it wants, and is destined to be frustrated (in part because of this ignorance). The ego is self-frustrating, like a drop of water which rests on the shore and longs to know the sea, not realising that it is not held back from entering the sea and becoming one with it. Poor ego! Can we give it love and our sympathy (but not condescending pity)? Or do we demand of ego, a non-egoic "enlightened" perspective? Isn't that a silly thing to expect from ego? Why, then, later attack it for not fulfilling our silly demands?

The Far Shore: Vipassana, The Practice of Insight, pp. 31-32.
C 1980,1996,2001,2009 by Mitchell Ginsberg.
Excerpted with permission of the author. In quoting please acknowledge source.

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