Buddha and Ego

Asceticism as a way to purity of consciousness had long been a tradition before Buddha came to be, and has remained part of the philosophy of individuals seeking deliverance from the pull of human nature ever since. The central idea in such self denial is that fear and desire have to be dominated by the force of willpower or they will forever pull a person back into the tainted consciousness of normal human existence and the suffering everyone at that level experiences. 

As products of Ego in perpetuating the sense of self, fear and desire brought the spotlight inevitably and directly to Ego, making it a villain to those who sought relief from the travails of being human. People needed a target, something to be able to address with a feeling of real confrontation so that they could accomplish a sense of personal control in the war over who or what would have charge of their experience. 

The notion for many students of human nature was that the annihilation of Ego was absolutely necessary if the cessation of suffering and the entry into an enlightened state were to be possible. For the more fervent of these, the oft-heard battle cry became “kill Ego.” 

Buddha came to view Ego wholly differently. He began to observe its productions rather than target them for destruction. His approach was one of student-teacher in which he took the position of learning all he could from the classroom of Ego, realizing that a broad and flexible perspective provided him with a much better handle on its nature and its influence. He became an empiricist. He was the general on the distant hill watching the drama of the battlefield below.  

As he quietly watched the productions of his mind come and go, and felt his attention being drawn in by them, Buddha realized how easy it was to become entrapped in their cyclical movements.  He recognized that any position he took by way of identifying with or attacking his thoughts and feelings represented a fixedness of consciousness that monopolized his energy and inhibited his awareness. He realized that for however long his attention had been thus co-opted, he had been in a trance. He knew then he had lived life in a trance-like way without having any idea that this was so. 

Buddha was determined to escape the cycling that dominated his consciousness. With the greatest of self discipline each time he sensed that his attention was drifting with a thought or a feeling, he consciously re-positioned his awareness to a neutral place. 

With practice Buddha became completely aware of Ego in all of its guises as the yearnings, fears, biases, preconceptions and the like that cluttered his mind. By letting each pass as it arose, he learned that none of them represented who he really was. For as attractive or compelling as they could sometimes be, and as natural a facet of him that they might have often seemed, his awareness of them had demonstrated with complete certainty that they were in fact separate from his consciousness.