True Self and Ego Self

18AD

I'm finding it hard to distinguish between what one might call the true self and will with the ego and desire.

Personally I love playing music, and I strive to advance at this skill, but is this an ego driven or self driven activity...?

I find similar ideas project regarding other aspects of life. I strive to do things I enjoy and honestly feel that these are things I'm supposed to be doing (Maybe because I like them so much ). Whether they work out or not is beside the point.

Then are these just 'pleasures of the flesh', if you will...
And if so, what else am I going to do while I'm here (alive)?

Bexz

18AD wrote:

I'm finding it hard to distinguish between what one might call the true self and will with the ego and desire.

Personally I love playing music, and I strive to advance at this skill, but is this an ego driven or self driven activity...?

I find similar ideas project regarding other aspects of life. I strive to do things I enjoy and honestly feel that these are things I'm supposed to be doing (Maybe because I like them so much ). Whether they work out or not is beside the point.

Then are these just 'pleasures of the flesh', if you will...
And if so, what else am I going to do while I'm here (alive)?

In the begining it was probably self driven, but as you progress and find that you get better it becomes more of what you call, ego driven.

Asiaprod

18AD wrote:

Personally I love playing music, and I strive to advance at this skill, but is this an ego driven or self driven activity...?

Interesting question. I have been playing guitar now for 20+ years. I find that music is one of the forms I use to express myself. There are indeed times when it is ego driven, like on stage during a concert, but all the practise and study that went into getting to that concert was a self driven effort. This I think applies to most things we do. I see no problem with this method as long as the ultimate objective of what we are doing is not egotistical. Nowhere in any Buddhist text does it forbid us to do things we enjoy. However, we are warned of the dangers that lie in certain activities. I think we need to beaR in mind that a alot of the texts were writen aimed at monks and nuns who were expected to give up most if not all worldly pleasures. Neither you nor I are monks or nuns. We function in a very different environment. We are free to enjoy our life, we are free to give and take pleasure, as long as we do it with the right intentions.

18AD

Cool. Thanks for replies.

I've found this to be the case with some of Buddhisms teaching. That one set of ideals, however truthful or virtuous, will be impossible to uphold in certain circumstances. I can't think of any examples off hand but it has happened to me in the past.

I'd be inclined to agree with you with regard many of the texts having been written for nuns or priests. Some of it just can't work if you don't pursue the life fully.

To me it seems inherently obvious that people who pursue things because it is what they enjoy doing tend to excel at it even in the eyes of others. Not in order to become the best but purely for personnal development. While people who pursue something to become the best may become overrun by greed and lust for more. Even the methods of attainment will be different, self determined hard work (personal, in the now) and seeking help versus undermining others (impersonal, in the future) and focus on result which may be an unattainable abstraction.

Of course there are near infinite variables that can combine with these, this is just a basic understanding for me...and a slight generalisation

Any feedback welcome.
Good day.

maitri

Interesting thread! But I have a question:

Is it even really possible to talk of a "true self" in Buddhism?

I thought the view about this was more like: "The deeds are but no doer is found" (Buddhaghosa) - and that the idea of an unchanging substantial "I" is an illusion according to Buddhism. Please "arrest" me if I'm wrong in this.

According to Buddhism what constitutes a human being - that is the "aggregates of existence" or khandhas: matter, sensations, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness - are insubstantial , conditioned and changing.

"They are a part of the ceaseless change and flow of all things. Not for a single second do they remain the same. They pursue their course of birth, decay and death, and they carry the individual with them in that process because they are the individual.

Thus an individual's existence is not a solid rock which has somehow been cast into the stream of life and death, and around which swirl and eddy the various experiences of life. It is an indistinguishable part of that stream: it is the swirl and eddy of an rapidly moving stream, and it can do no more halt the process of change than can a river halt its progress to the sea.

Existence, properly understood, is not "solid": it is a rapidly changing sequence, which moves from one moment to the next.

Like the frames of a film being projected on to a screen, there is the appearance of continuity; each frame is in fact a separate photograph, but the sequence of eachphotograph is so close that it gives the appearance of continuous movement. Similarly,human life is made up by a series of individual moments. The sequence is so close that it gives the appearence of continuity, because each "moment" is the cause of the next."
(John Bowker)

This, of course, does not mean that playing music or doing something one likes is wrong.

What is wrong (ignorant) is the idea of an substantial (and unchanging) "I" playing the music.

And what brings suffering to oneself and others (and creates greed/thirst to become this or that in the future) is clinging to this delusion... if I understand it correctly.

The thing I found after messing up a cello exam was that I was making it all about me, me, me instead of about the music and how the music itself should be played. That was a way of my ego affecting it, I think.
There's playing music for the sake of the music and playing it because of you showing off your skill.
Um, I'm sure this can be applied in a more general manner somehow...

As for true self... I would have gone with the idea there wasn't one, but I'll leave that til later.

18AD

Using the term true self is probably something I borrowed from new age terminology.

I personally see the self or ego as being illusory. The term true self would suggest that there's another self beyond that ego. However this seems like a regress of the ego. The tricks it plays so you don't forget yourself. Even the term 'higher' or 'true' are suggestive of a successful ego!

"The deeds are but no doer is found" (Buddhaghosa)
That's a nice one. Action without doing. Music without playing I think my cofusion here arises in the very fact that when you try and define something using language you have to use words like 'I' or 'They' since otherwise the event would be indescribable or mystically vague.

So if the term true self refers to this indefinable I, it's just perpetuating the illusion of I.

Someone showed me an interesting quote earlier:
Being a god is the quality of being able to be yourself to such an extent that your passions correspond with the forces of the universe, so that those who look upon you know this without hearing your name spoken. -Robert Zelazny

So in that sense Mars is war, Aphrodite is love, you are your attributes.

This stills ends up with a self reference but I think it'd help dissolve the feeling of the boundary between yourself and environment.

Not existing confuses me :rolleyes:

Wu wei!

maitri

Interesting thoughts.

18AD wrote:

Not existing confuses me :rolleyes:

Yet, I don't think Buddhism denies existence. What it denies is existence of a unchanging substantial self or "I", I think. Thus it can perhaps be described philosophically as a middle path between eternalism and nihilism.

18AD wrote:

Wu wei!

18AD

maitri wrote:

Yet, I don't think Buddhism denies existence. What it denies is existence of a unchanging substantial self or "I", I think.

Thanks for that. Just what I needed!

After much thought I have a temporary explanation...
It'll do for now. For me.

The illusive 'I'. Think back to before you were born. There was nothing, so far as I can see. You were void. Then upon birth there sprung a vessel in which void could be housed. Then you have a body, a brain. Which seems unusually divided from everything without. In this material realm you seem to have a reference point amidst the void. Perception overwhelms you, your void is filled with everything around you.

In order to be someone you can only talk about things you have experienced, things which have flooded your void self.

Everyone is a reference point amidst the void. But the void is one and undivided. So you exist as a relative reference point in the void.

But really everything here is one. But we choose to name different parts in order to gain a better understanding of how this place works and what is going on. But really this thinking only works so far as if one knows how to make a bike one can gather the pieces and put it together, but this doesn't work for the universe because it is an indivisible process. The parts have no use when divided on the grand scale of all that is. This part of the idea needs further development.

Comments and criticism welcome.

Have a nice day!

maitri

Interesting thoughts again 18AD.

You wrote: After much thought I have a temporary explanation...
It'll do for now. For me.

Glad you found something that works for you. All explanations are by nature temporary anyway, I think...

I wonder, when you are speaking about "void" are you thinking about something like the Buddhist term shunyata, or does it have another meaning for you?

BTW, I just came across this explanation of the Buddhist notion of emptiness:

"There is nothing to be removed from it
And not the slightest to be added.
Actual reality is to be seen as it really is—
Who sees actual reality is released.

The basic element (Buddha nature, shunyata?) is empty of what is adventitious,
Which has the characteristic of being separable.
It is not empty of the unsurpassable dharmas (highest qualities),
Which have the characteristic of being inseparable."

18AD

Nice link, I hadn't heard of that term before.
From what I have read there it is something similar I imagine.

Imagine there was no one to experience the universe. The concept of existing holds no water. There could be no existence because it is something we have created. So when I use the term void I mean the time before you were born, there was nothing.

Then to see this universe as one process which brought about our existence we deem our experiences as what the universe is, but these are just our perceptions. And without a perceiving body there is nothing to view these things as real. We are the universal process in action. But it has brought us about as separate, relative beings. But all the while the nothingness is still inherent in everything.

I'm not saying that all this, here, now isn't happening. But the nothingness is everywhere and the experience is here now.

Maybe try to see it as everything being one process and we are relative reference points in the middle of it all. The universe is experiencing everything everyone is, but we can't. We are part of this process and yet the whole process is all of us.

Thanks for your time and kind words.

What a confusing topic...:p

The Mad Hatter

maitri wrote:

All explanations are by nature temporary anyway, I think...

Hm...not sure I agree with this. The laws of physics for example, which are really just ways of explaining how the universe works, don't change. At least not with this universe anyway

But maybe I'm just being too flexible with the definition...

DublinWriter

18AD wrote:

One of the most helpful exercises Fripp suggested for musicians before practise was to sit in silence with your instrument for at least five minutes before commencing practise.

I second that. Almost like meditation, in a way.

Try asking a drummer to do that!.

Impossible, drummers are born to make noise:D