/fringe/ - Fringe

Good timing! I was just about to make a thread on this after reading a post about killing the ego in the questions thread.

Buddhism is all about killing desires, yet Buddha himself had all his material desires fulfilled from birth. There is clearly a big contradiction between what was and what ended up being taught. In this sense, Buddhism should have been about attaining all one's desires but instead it comes off as dishonest and disrupts a person's natural path by sending them into guilt trips over what they need to experience. What the truth was for this character is far from the truth of the common man who doesn't have palaces built for him. This picture is very relevant in that regard.

If it was truly possible to learn from the mistakes of someone else we would be perfect already. We all know that our greed is destroying us but we continue feeding it. We can see what the ultimate truth is but we keep rejecting it. We haven't actually lived through true terror so countless warnings about the end of times makes little to no difference to us.

Desire is what you are compelled to experience in this lifetime. The compass that grants you freedom. If you are feeling unfulfilled in any way, it is because you are not following your true desires. Which are going to be different for all.

I've experienced the corruption within the New Age movement firsthand so I can critique eastern mysticism with great passion. It is obviously teaching good moral ideals and has helpful techniques, but is also disempowering and breeds denial. If you truly don't have desires, you don't exist. The separate, individual you at least. Are you ready to reintegrate into pure awareness? That doesn't mean you get to be an angel or anything. You just fade into nothing/everything. Nobody can be around to say that they have killed their ego. It makes no sense. This is understandable by anyone.

The ego is indeed the source of pain and suffering, but to seek a way out of pain and suffering because it is painful is to essentially tie yourself to pain and suffering precisely because you constantly seek to be rid of it. It's like scratching at a rash that will go away on its own, it feels good when you scratch it but it doesn't make the rash go away, it makes the rash worse. Most (but notably not all) Buddhists will disagree on this point, but it's a language issue rather than a conceptual one, the point is functionally the same.

You want to know the secret behind your ego? It's a joke. The self is a joke, an illusion. That isn't to belittle it or to sneer at it, jokes are funny and illusions can be cool, and notably, an illusion is still a 'real' thing, but only in a mental sense. There is no atom of you which is singularly your 'self.' There is no thought which is your defining thought. There is no static thing which is you, and if it did exist, it would be destroyed the moment you take a breath. At best you are a dynamic steady state, but at the deepest level, the boundary between 'you' and 'not-you' is as substantial as a phantom.

Left-handed paths which value and elevate the ego are the spiritual equivalent of performance art. Cool to look at, fun to perform, sometimes thought provoking, but ultimately temporary manifestations. Enjoy them if you want, or not. You're already fulfilled.

>>51216

Actually Advaita Vedanta is probably as close as you'll come to Buddhism within Hinduism itself. To state that no single self can be found, that there in fact is no self, which is what Siddhartha rightly claimed, does not substantially differ from the claim that the self is indeed cosmic and all there is. When everything is the self, no one thing is the self. When nothing is the self, then calling everything the self or not is not particularly relevant. Buddha did not discourage the dissolution of ego boundaries in order to reform them to be universal, nor would any serious Hindu, since that is the root of understanding and the one constant, universal, timeless truth: Tao.

Both Buddhists and Hindus would call surface-level reality illusory. Note the trick here: Suffering is really only a surface-level experience and no more substantive than any other mutable, changing thing. It's a manifestation, not a root truth–the smoke, not the fire. Zennists would say that all Dharmic paths are fingers pointing at the same moon. Many who follow branching paths within these frameworks do so out of expedience rather than real disrespect toward the fundamentals of their cousins.

>>51684

Siddhartha said that there is no self (atman), either mortal or cosmic. That is to say, at a certain point, a 'self' ceases to make sense as a cohesive thing, that it is illusory in nature and that the ego is not founded on something real and grounded. Vedantists by contrast claim that essentially everything is the self, that at a certain point the concept of 'other' breaks down also. Really, the difference between these two philosophies is which concept breaks down first, the self or the other, but in truth it could go either way and the concepts would still lose meaning. That's why I stated that Advaita Vedanta is very close to Buddhism.

So it depends on which philosophy you're asking about. If Buddhism, the answer is both. If Vedanta, the answer is the ego, but ultimately both as well. Eventually even the concepts of divisions or oneness can be seen to be provisional and contextual.

For my purposes, however, I think that reforming the ego with no boundaries is a healthy practice; Siddhartha agreed with that. Before you can even think about letting go of a cosmic ego (difficult to do since it is the definition of bliss to discover that you are indeed that great thing you seek), the boundaries of your ego in this life must be destroyed, even temporarily, before you may come back to an individual self again, knowing who you are as that great suchness rather than just an ego, which is of course the great game (some say lie, but this implies intent and malice, two things which the ego on its own is incapable of) of samsara, the story your ego tells which is not the ultimate truth but only a single fragmented provisional truth and not the real you.

Think of it this way: You are an ocean, and egos are waves. Now, those waves are not the whole of the ocean, nor is the whole of the ocean made up of waves, but there are no waves without the ocean, and in truth those waves are made up of the ocean, they ARE the ocean manifesting as a certain shape, as a certain act, a certain event (that of a wave) at a certain time.

Imagine for a moment that that wave knew itself only as a wave, and yearned constantly to again be a part of the ocean from which it came, not knowing that it has indeed been the ocean all along. Imagine its terror at the thought of crashing on a beach, for fear that it may become stranded and never again become a part of the ocean. Imagine its relief if it at last understood that it was never apart from the ocean at all! So it is with understanding; the most prominent feeling which comes with sudden enlightenment is relief. This world suddenly is not only much clearer, but also much more free; it may be as pleasant a place as might be imagined, when you realize that you are free to view it however you wish, and that ultimately it is a game for fun, and not truly serious in a cosmic sense.

Just as a wave does not in reality fear crashing on the beach, nor is it ever in danger, someone awake to the fundamental nature of things no longer holds any of the fears which the ego imposes on people; he knows he is playing a game and indeed can even play it better once he knows what it is, but he is no longer deceived by the game itself into believing it is more serious or unpleasant than it is. Even suffering and pain is simply another form of sensation, another aspect of the illusory game, a manifestation but not a root cause. The sage (many names are applied here, such as bodhisattva, but 'sage' has good implications in English) seems not to be motivated by the same things as an ordinary man because indeed he does not desire as an ordinary man does. He feels no lack within himself, nor can he be insulted or blown about by the winds of circumstance or public opinion. This is one reason why sages and others are said to sometimes seem to float above the ground (sometimes literally); they are not tethered to the karma of an ego-driven life, nor even by a distaste for the ego, a distaste they lack. They do not scorn the world for playing the game of itself but are simply no longer under its sway.

>>51813

You're welcome any time, it was a pleasure.

>>51826

I very much second this post with one important caveat. As wise as it is during one stage of the journey to reject the ego (that stage being when a sincere student still has not understood the nature of his ego or this world), hatred of the ego and of samsara is itself a tether to samsara. So long as the ego is hatefully reviled and despised, it will be retained in the seeker's mind because it must to some degree be thought of as both true and powerful in order to be seen as a threat to be destroyed.

I am well aware that progress can be made even with a spiteful view of the ego and the rejection of it as the principal evil of the world, as the root of suffering. Indeed it is, for those who out of ignorance take the ego at face value and believe its most persuasive fiction, that it is something of real value. However, the emotional response and content of the negative view of the ego is often an obstacle of its own for newer students. Once this universe can be understood as play rather than punishment, the ego can be fully understood as a mask rather than a shackle.

The ego is not a conscious thing but a provisional model of the world. It warrants comparison with language as a tool whose uses are so widespread and powerful that people forget that it has its limitations and very serious drawbacks. It neither loves nor hates the consciousness which is under its sway, nor has an ego itself ever held malice; these are emotions which arise out of the limitations of the ego, like sparks from flint; flint has no knowledge that it causes sparks or fire, nor any true desire to burn anything. It is simply flint, and similarly, the ego is not a liar, the ego is its own fiction.

In short, remember that in order to remove yourself from the self-imposed bonds of this life and the suffering that comes along with ignorance, you must also remove your hatred of imprisonment, knowing that it not only is no longer a danger, but in fact never could truly threaten you or anyone else at all! This is a serious obstacle but awareness of it will help immensely when at last it is time to shed the boundaries of your ego.

>>52052

>After reading this, im scared to try and do anything.

That's kind of ironic. The whole point of ignoring the ego is that you will soon slough off the fears that your ego puts in front of you. You will even stop fearing artifice and backsliding because it will no longer be of consequence to you. Therefore, you may try whatever you like; if Tao cannot hide from you, it really doesn't matter what form it takes.

>Im probably doing something wrong.

The only thing you're doing wrong is worrying that you are doing something wrong. Follow the instructions of the path that works for you if that's the path you follow that has been working, but regret and doubt about this sort of thing is precisely the barrier put up by the ego, the mistaken belief that someone else is so much more ascended than you and that it's just such an impossible, far-off goal. In fact, enlightenment is the default state of everything. It is inherent, you cannot possibly remove yourself from suchness, it can't be done. Therefore, fears like "I'm doing something wrong" or "I am desirous therefore something in me is flawed" are just hide-and-seek games being played by that suchness, pretending it isn't really what it is.

It might be helpful to think of it this way (this is one way I learned it): God has a million arms, and a finger puppet collection like you wouldn't believe. You are one of those finger puppets. You can go crazy; believe the ego all day long, seek material wealth, ignore all good advice, poison yourself with every nasty substance you can come up with, fuck cheap floozies until you get every STD known to science, kill people, rape, perform every kind of horrific and evil act in this world that makes you feel completely and totally isolated from any sort of universal truth, and you would still just be one of god's fingers, no more or less god than any other finger. You would still be simply playing a role.

Training and learning new things are good because we like to do them, there's a lot of pleasure to be gained by learning a discipline, and by applying yourself to see just how far you could go with it. It's also healthy to have a discipline about the way in which you see the world; certain viewpoints about the world are blissful to the core. However, it is well and truly impossible to not at your core have tao/suchness/whatever-it-is. The ultimate fiction, the least true thing ever told or believed by anyone, is that you are other than the divine, that you are distinct from it. You have utterly nothing to truly worry about besides surface-level ego concerns.

>>52115

No problem. When I say imprisonment, in this context I mean being trapped in samsara and subject to the kind of fear and suffering which comes from taking the ego at face value. I do not mean physical imprisonment, although ultimately fear of physical imprisonment is dependent upon the ego as well.

The point of this is not to erase all fears, pains, and suffering completely, but to erase all spiritual/deep fear, pain, and suffering. One can still desire not to, for example, get sick, while still recognizing that such a desire is totally conditional on all sorts of things like having a body, being of a certain age, demographic, etc. In other words, it is understood that sickness of the body, or physical imprisonment, or whatever else it may be, is simply another manifestation of suchness. As an individual you may not enjoy it but deep down, knowing that you are that great suchness, it is of no consequence.

So, in short, it may be that you fear physical imprisonment, but the imprisonment I mean is much more pervasive and painful. Physical freedom is nice but internal freedom from delusion is the most noble thing one might desire.

I hope this, too, helps. I'm glad that I've been able to help so far.

>>52115

>>52122

I should clarify that the way out of samsara is to be beyond the ego. The first step is to widen your context. I mean this literally; stargaze, study astronomy, the scale of the universe. Attempt to grasp the ungraspable, the utter immensity of information within a single cubic millimeter, or less. Study what constitutes the body, what constitutes the brain. This is one method, one way of discovering that the ordinary concept of the self is illusory. Eventually, with meditation and certain practices, the boundaries of the ego may slip, and you may have an experience in which all of this clicks. This is satori, awakening, and it is not only possible within this lifetime, but some people get it within as little as a week. Sometimes less. For some, it takes 30 years. For others, 30 seconds. But it's attainable, and when you feel it, it will not be airy and mystical and dreamy, it will be immediate, real, and usually very ha-ha funny.

Either way, try not to focus too much on whether or not you "feel" it. The feeling is nice but it's icing on the cake, and when you really do get it, you'll realize that you no longer need to seek for a particular feeling or moment of awakening any more because the inherent nature of being is something that just can't be removed, or broken, or subverted, only masked. Satori is unspeakably blissful, I mean it will be the defining moment in your life, but the true gift is not the experiential pleasure that comes from lacking desire (or more specifically, desiring only that which actually is, desiring tao and tao alone), but the internal peace and quiet which follows. This is something which is really attainable and not even all that special. In trying to explain imprisonment, I may have overlooked or underemphasized the role that acceptance of samsara plays in this. Rather than basically letting samsara run roughshod over you, or rejecting it wholesale, the path which seems to work best is what Siddhartha called the middle way. No too much ego, but not so much striving for no ego that you actually bounce back and develop an ego again based around being the guy in the room with the smallest ego (false modesty).

Much of this is very simple and self-evident. I share this with you in a wordy way because that's the way it worked for me, and how it works for some people. Some people develop from a light touch, others from more in-depth instruction. I belong to the latter category. You say you fear physical imprisonment, the restriction of your life by an outside agent. This is a pretty serious fear, in that for your ego, it really would be terribly unpleasant to be imprisoned, wouldn't it? But as a starting point, I want you to ask yourself why it is you really fear imprisonment, and what would happen if you were to be imprisoned. What would it mean about this world? What would it mean for the things which you love, the concepts you enjoy, your philosophy? Would those things which you love cease to be enjoyed if you were imprisoned, and, with respect, what is the difference philosophically between having a body which is imprisoned and a body which is free? These probably seem like bullshit non-answers but they're all a way of inquiring, in a roundabout way, about the self. That's a great place to start.

>>52130

>>52122

You are an authentic cosmic pal anon. I am going through the process of distilling my ego and your words give me a sense of direction as well as reaffirming my path is the correct one for me. For that you have my eternal gratitude.

Homer always brought me joy so here's a picture of him.

Nice.

>>52219

That is temporary suffering. To go back to the imprisonment metaphor, you could tell yourself that you're okay with the cage because really each bar (each instance of suffering) is only so thick, so there are gaps between them, but really, you're not going to slip through the gaps by trying to "man up" and run face-first into the bars of your cage. If you don't even understand your circumstances, then you're just playing by the rules of samsara and will remain trapped, since trying to force your way out is just what a cage is designed for. Similarly, trying to overcome ego with ego (and "manning up" is an ego-based act. No judgment, it just is) just produces a more self-aggrandizing ego playing the game of "I'm real hard and I'm really worth something because I can suffer the most." Well, that's a kind of masochism, isn't it? A kind of self-promoting voice of "I'm real hard and tough, this life is unforgiving and the universe is merciless, therefore if I am unforgiving and merciless, I'm better." Well, that's ego-centric, it's self-flattery, self-inflation. Not everyone is alright again later. There are many other kinds of suffering. A peasant kid in Cambodia or Vietnam who gets his leg blown off by an old undiscovered land mine suffers in quite a different way from someone who has their closest loved one die of something awful, but both suffer. Suffering can be quiet or loud, long or short, but all instances of suffering are leaves from the same plant, the ego.

However, there is an ultimate suffering, a kind of deep-down suffering that precedes all the others and allows other forms of suffering in, and that is the fiction that the world of the ego is serious, that you are separate from this universe, that you are separate from the divine, or reviled, or somehow broken at a fundamental level. This is a fiction which runs so deeply through the ego, which is so entrenched in most people's sense of self, that separating someone from this deep-down "first" suffering (the goal of all Dharmic paths, by which I am including the Chinese paths which are very closely aligned and intertwined, the philosophical partners/lovers of Dharmic philosophy) requires in almost all cases a radical rethinking and reexamination of the self.

It is possible for one to have an ego, thin as it may be, while recognizing and denying this kind of suffering. It is of course the goal to attain this state and then, if you're really good, to maintain it such that you don't even have to worry about even minor instances of suffering. However, that's a neat parlor trick compared to removing the deep-down suffering. Thankfully, removing that deep suffering is actually easier than trying to maintain that state all the time. In some cases it doesn't even require meditation (although it helps), just the right circumstances, the right teacher (doesn't have to be a human or even a living thing), and the right setup of thoughts to produce that 'aha!' moment. Really, if you can solve a math question, you can attain satori, and believe me, yes, you want to.

Not all hindu/buddhist thought attributes suffering due to the ego.

>>52130

>satori

>>52760

This girl is named Satori. Guess Touhou is more greenpilled than I thought.

>>52819

>>52819

The Ego isn't the shadow self. The ego is a separate thing. The shadow self is that which you do not accept about yourself. The ego is what you do accept about yourself. The higher self is that which you truly are.

When you say "I am ____" you are reinforcing your ego. Love and light hippies still have extremely fucked up egos that say "IM A LIGHTWORKER, IM HERE FOR YOUR BETTERMENT" and completely stagnate as a being, or almost stagnate.

Shadow-Inner Demon

Ego-You

Higherself-Inner Angel

and thats in basic terms

>>52838

>>51741

Screencapped hard