Thanissaro Bhikkhu - The Problem of Egolessness

I found this cool article via American Buddhist Net.

Thanissaro Bhikkhu - The Problem of Egolessness - offers some wisdom for Westerners practicing the Dharma. In his view, many Westerners have misunderstood the idea of egolessness.

In this article the author clarifies the idea in a meaningful way. [Note: It's a PDF, which accounts for any funky lay-out in the portion I am presenting here.] He contends that Buddhism does not need any help from Western Psychology in developing a healthy ego, that the Buddha's teachings cover that fully.

I have to admit that I have long been an advocate of combing psychology and Buddhism, so the Bhikkhu is talking directly to me in this piece.

The Problem of Egolessness
THANISSARO BHIKKHU

Years back, many Buddhist teachers in the West began using the term “egolessness” to explain the Buddha’s teaching on not‐self. Since then, egolessness has come to mean many things to many people. Sometimes egolessness is used to mean a lack of conceit or self‐importance; sometimes, a pure mode of acting without thought of personal reward. In its most extended form, though, the teaching on egolessness posits a fundamental error of perception: that despite our sense of a lasting, separate self, no such self really exists. By trying to provide for the happiness of this illusory self, we not only place our hopes on an impossible goal but also harm ourselves and everyone around us. If we could only see the fallacy of the ego and understand its harmful effects, we would let it go and find true happiness in the interconnectedness that is our true nature.

At least that’s what we’re told, and often with a fair amount of vehemence. Buddhist writers, often so gentle and nonjudgmental, can quickly turn vicious when treating the ego. Some portray it as a tyrannical bureaucracy deserving violent overthrow; others, as a ratlike creature—nervous, scheming, and devious—that deserves to be squashed. Whatever the portrait, the message is always that the ego is so pernicious and tenacious that any mental or verbal abuse directed against it is fair play in getting it to loosen its foul grip on the mind.

But when people trained in classical Western psychotherapy read these attacks the ego, they shake their heads in disbelief. For them the ego is not something evil. It’s not even a singular thing you can attack. It’s a cluster of activities, a set of functions in the mind—and necessary functions at that. Any mental act by which you mediate between your raw desires for immediate pleasure and your superego—the oughts and shoulds you’ve learned from family and society—is an ego function. Ego functions are our mental strategies for gaining lasting happiness in the midst of the conflicting demands whispering and shouting in the mind. They enable you to say No to the desire to have sex with your neighbor’s spouse, in the interest of a happiness that would have less disastrous consequences for the things you truly value in life. They also enable you to say No to the demands of your parents, your teachers, or government when those demands would jeopardize your own best interest.

But ego functions don’t just say No. They also have a mediator’s sense of when to say Yes. If they’re skillful, they negotiate among your desires and your superego so that you can gain the pleasure you want in a way that causes no harm and can actually do a great deal of good. If your ego functions are healthy and well coordinated, they give you a consistent sense of priorities as to which forms of happiness are more worthwhile than others; a clear sense of where your responsibilities do and don’t lie; a strong sense of your ability to judge right and wrong for yourself; and an honest sense of how to learn from your past mistakes for the sake of greater happiness in the future.

From this perspective, egolessness would be a disaster. A person devoid of ego functions would be self‐destructive: either a beast with uncontrolled impulses, or a neurotic, repressed automaton with no mind of his or her own, or an infantile monster thrashing erratically between these two extremes. Anyone who tried to abandon ego functioning would arrest his psychological growth and lose all hope of becoming a mature, responsible, trustworthy adult. And as we know, selfdestructive people don’t destroy only themselves. They can pull down many of the people and places around them.

This is not only the view of trained Western psychologists. Buddhist communities in the West have also begun to recognize this problem and have coined the term “spiritual bypassing” to describe it: the way people try to avoid dealing with the problems of an unintegrated personality by spending all their time in meditation retreats, using the mantra of egolessness to short‐circuit the hard work of mastering healthy ego functioning in the daily give and take of their lives.

Then there’s the problem of self‐hatred. The Dalai Lama isn’t the only Asian Buddhist teacher surprised at the amount of self‐hatred found in the West. Unfortunately, a lot of people with toxic super‐egos have embraced the teaching on egolessness as the Buddha’s stamp of approval on the hatred they feel toward themselves.

These problems have inspired many Western psychologists to assume a major gap in the Buddha’s teachings: that in promoting egolessness, the Buddha overlooked the importance of healthy ego functioning in finding true happiness. This assumption has led to a corollary: that Buddhism needs the insights of Western psychotherapy to fill the gap; that to be truly effective, a healthy spiritual path needs to give equal weight to both traditions. Otherwise you come out lopsided and warped, an idiot savant who can thrive in the seclusion of a three year, three‐month, three‐day retreat, but can’t handle three hours caught in heavy traffic with three whining children.

Read the whole article.

Tags: Thanissaro Bhikkhu, The Problem of Egolessness, Buddhism, Psychology, self, Dharma, Buddha, ego, America, Asia