The ego in spiritual traditions

[Mr H]

Just something thinking about today. Consideration of the ego in spiritual traditions particularly the non dual ones. 

 

They teach that suffering is caused by resistance to what is from the egoic mind

 

But then they spend an inordinate amount of time teaching folks either to separate from the ego, or that the ego doesn't exist.

 

In the former case, why would you want to separate from the ego - essentially resisting what is?

 

And in the latter case, if we deny it's existence, we cannot then say legitimately that it's the cause of suffering.

 

Have I missed something here? Seems a bit contradictory....

[Campion]

My first introduction to the philosophy of mind and self as a little kid, though I didn't know it at the time, came from that great spiritual tradition the Beano and a cartoon called the Numskulls. There was a man and his head was filled with other little men in charge of his thinking, seeing, hearing, tasting etc, lots of little selves inside us all working together lol. 

 

Later on I got into more grown-up spirituality and came across two approaches: either that the self doesn't exist as in Buddhism and some Hindu traditions, or that the self is everything as in other Hindu traditions and certain Christian ones. And yeah, the no-self traditions are pretty confusing sometimes when you get taught non-attachment. Who should detach from what? Also how can they believe in reincarnation if there's no self or soul to be incarnated in the first place?  Where I got to before I left, was that the belief in a separate self is the illusion and cause of suffering: it does though exist as a mental construct of conditioned skandas (or bundles) -  Buddhism in particular has a complicated system of psychology called Abhidharma.  So if you feel resistance to something in your mind that is already a separation and inner conflict. But then saying we should be doing something different from what's already happening also implies a resistance to what is: ie to resist the resistance. So the whole thing looks like a kind of paradox, because we're looking at it from the dualistic way which we're in.  Hence the emphasis that we can't think our way out of dualism but need to practice our way out through something like meditation or self-inquiry etc.