7

THE VEILS OF THE EGO

First we conceive the “I” and grasp onto it.

Then we conceive the “mine” and cling to the material world.

Like water trapped on a waterwheel, we spin in circles, powerless.

I praise the compassion that embraces all beings.

CHANDRAKIRTI

Mental confusion is a veil that prevents us from seeing reality clearly and clouds our understanding of the true nature of things. Practically speaking, it is also the inability to identify the behavior that would allow us to find happiness and avoid suffering. When we look outward, we solidify the world by projecting onto it attributes that are in no way inherent to it. Looking inward, we freeze the flow of consciousness when we conceive of an “I” enthroned between a past that no longer exists and a future that does not yet exist. We take it for granted that we see things as they are and rarely question that opinion. We spontaneously assign intrinsic qualities to things and people, thinking “this is beautiful, that is ugly,” without realizing that our mind superimposes these attributes upon what we perceive. We divide the entire world between “desirable” and “undesirable,” we ascribe permanence to ephemera and see independent entities in what is actually a network of ceaselessly changing relations. We tend to isolate particular aspects of events, situations, and people, and to focus entirely upon these particularities. This is how we end up labeling others as “enemies,” “good,” “evil,” et cetera, and clinging strongly to those attributions. However, if we consider reality carefully, its complexity becomes obvious.

If one thing were truly beautiful and pleasant, if those qualities genuinely belonged to it, we could consider it desirable at all times and in all places. But is anything on earth universally and unanimously recognized as beautiful? As the canonical Buddhist verse has it: “For the lover, a beautiful woman is an object of desire; for the hermit, a distraction; for the wolf, a good meal.” Likewise, if an object were inherently repulsive, everyone would have good reason to avoid it. But it changes everything to recognize that we are merely attributing these qualities to things and people. There is no intrinsic quality in a beautiful object that makes it beneficial to the mind, and nothing in an ugly object to harm it.

In the same way, a person whom we consider today to be an enemy is most certainly somebody else’s object of affection, and we may one day forge bonds of friendship with that selfsame enemy. We react as if characteristics were inseparable from the object we assign them to. Thus we distance ourselves from reality and are dragged into the machinery of attraction and repulsion that is kept relentlessly in motion by our mental projections. Our concepts freeze things into artificial entities and we lose our inner freedom, just as water loses its fluidity when it turns to ice.

THE CRYSTALLIZATION OF THE EGO

Among the many aspects of our confusion, the most radically disruptive is the insistance on the concept of a personal identity: the ego. Buddhism distinguishes between an innate, instinctive “I”—when we think, for instance, “I’m awake” or “I’m cold”—and a conceptual “self” shaped by the force of habit. We attribute various qualities to it and posit it as the core of our being, autonomous and enduring.

At every moment between birth and death, the body undergoes ceaseless transformations and the mind becomes the theater of countless emotional and conceptual experiences. And yet we obstinately assign qualities of permanence, uniqueness, and autonomy to the self. Furthermore, as we begin to feel that this self is highly vulnerable and must be protected and satisfied, aversion and attraction soon come into play—aversion for anything that threatens the self, attraction to all that pleases it, comforts it, boosts its confidence, or puts it at ease. These two basic feelings, attraction and repulsion, are the fonts of a whole sea of conflicting emotions.

The ego, writes Buddhist philosopher Han de Wit, “is also an affective reaction to our field of experience, a mental withdrawal based on fear.”¹ Out of fear of the world and of others, out of dread of suffering, out of anxiety about living and dying, we imagine that by hiding inside a bubble—the ego—we will be protected. We create the illusion of being separate from the world, hoping thereby to avert suffering. In fact, what happens is just the opposite, since ego-grasping and self-importance are the best magnets to attract suffering.

Genuine fearlessness arises with the confidence that we will be able to gather the inner resources necessary to deal with any situation that comes our way. This is altogether different from withdrawing into self-absorption, a fearful reaction that perpetuates deep feelings of insecurity.

Each of us is indeed a unique person, and it is fine to recognize and appreciate who we are. But in reinforcing the separate identity of the self, we fall out of sync with reality. The truth is, we are fundamentally interdependent with other people and our environment. Our experience is simply the content of the mental flow, the continuum of consciousness, and there is no justification for seeing the self as an entirely distinct entity within that flow. Imagine a spreading wave that affects its environment and is affected by it but is not the medium of transmission for any particular entity. We are so accustomed to affixing the “I” label to that mental flow, however, that we come to identify with it and to fear its disappearance. There follows a powerful attachment to the self and thus to the notion of “mine”—my body, my name, my mind, my possessions, my friends, and so on—which leads either to the desire to possess or to the feeling of repulsion for the “other.”

This is how the concepts of the self and of the other crystallize in our minds. The erroneous sense of duality becomes inevitable, forming the basis of all mental affliction, be it alienating desire, hatred, jealousy, pride, or selfishness. From that point on, we see the world through the distorting mirror of our illusions. We find ourselves in disharmony with the true nature of things, which inevitably leads to frustration and suffering.

We can see this crystallization of “I” and “mine” in many situations of daily life. You are napping peacefully in a boat in the middle of a lake. Another craft bumps into yours and wakes you with a start. Thinking that a clumsy or prankish boater has crashed into you, you leap up furious, ready to curse him out, only to find that the boat in question is empty. You laugh at your own mistake and return peaceably to your nap. The only difference between the two reactions is that in the first case, you’d thought yourself the target of someone’s malice, while in the second you realized that your “I” was not a target.

Likewise, if someone punches you, your irritation will be long-lasting. But consider the physical pain—it fades quickly and is soon imperceptible. The only thing that continues to hurt is the ego’s wound. A friend of mine had come to Nepal from Hong Kong to attend some teachings. Thousands of people had gathered and were jam-packed on the floor of our monastery’s vast courtyard. As my friend was moving back and forth trying to seat herself a bit more comfortably, cross-legged on her cushion, someone punched her in the back. As she told me later: “I felt irritated for a whole hour. How could someone attending Buddhist teachings behave in such a rude and uncompassionate way toward me, who had come so far to receive these teachings! But after a while I realized that although my irritation had been long-lasting, the actual physical pain had faded quickly and had soon become imperceptible. The only thing that continued to hurt was my wounded ego! I had one minute of body pain and fifty-nine minutes of ego pain!” When we see the self as a mere concept and not as an autonomous entity that we must protect and satisfy at all costs, we react in completely different ways.

Here is another example to illustrate our attachment to the idea of “mine.” You are looking at a beautiful porcelain vase in a shopwindow when a clumsy salesman knocks it over. “What a shame! Such a lovely vase!” you sigh, and continue calmly on your way. On the other hand, if you had just bought that vase and had placed it proudly on the mantle, only to see it fall and smash to smithereens, you would cry out in horror, “My vase is broken!” and be deeply affected by the accident. The sole difference is the label “my” that you had stuck to the vase.

This erroneous sense of a real and independent self is of course based on egocentricity, which persuades us that our own fate is of greater value than that of others. If your boss scolds a colleague you hate, berates another you have no feelings about, or reprimands you bitterly, you will feel pleased or delighted in the first case, indifferent in the second, and deeply hurt in the third. But in reality, what could possibly make the well-being of any one of these three people more valuable than that of the others? The egocentricity that places the self at the center of the world has an entirely relative point of view. Our mistake is in fixing our own point of view and hoping, or worse yet, insisting, that “our” world prevail over that of others.

On a visit to Mexico, the Dalai Lama was shown a map of the world and told: “If you look at how the continents are arranged, you’ll see that Mexico is at the center of the world.” (When I was a child, a Breton friend of mine told me that the little island of Dumet was the center of the known world!) The Dalai Lama answered: “If you follow that line of reasoning, you’ll find that Mexico City is at the center of Mexico, my house is at the center of the city, my family is at the center of the house, and within my family I am the center of the world.”

WHAT TO DO WITH THE EGO?

Unlike Buddhism, very few psychological treatments address the problem of how to reduce the feeling of self-centeredness—a reduction that, for the wise man, extends all the way to eradicating the ego. This is certainly a new, even subversive idea in the West, which holds the self to be the fundamental building block of the personality. Surely, if I eliminate my ego I will cease to exist as a person. How can you have an individual without an I, an ego? Isn’t such a concept psychically dangerous? Isn’t there a risk of sinking into some kind of schizophrenia? Isn’t a weak or nonexistent ego the clinical sign of a potentially forceful pathology? Don’t you need a fully developed personality before you can renounce the ego? These are the kinds of defensive reactions most Westerners have to such unfamiliar notions. The idea that one needs a robust ego comes from the fact that some people who suffer from mental problems are said to have a fragmented, fragile, or deficient sense of self.

The psychology of infancy describes how a baby learns about the world; how she figures out her relationship to her mother, her father, and those around her; how, at the age of one, she comes to understand that she and her mother are two distinct beings, that the world is not simply an extension of herself, and that she can be the cause of unfolding events. This growing awareness is called psychological birth. That is when we begin to see the individual as a personality, ideally stable, self-assured, and anchored to its belief in the existence of its self. Parental and then academic education reinforce that notion, which is prevalent throughout our literature and our history. In a way, you might say that the belief in an established self is one of the dominant characteristics of our civilization. Do we not speak of building strong, resilient, adaptable, and assertive personalities?

This confuses ego and self-confidence. The ego can attain only a contrived confidence built on insubstantial attributes—power, success, beauty and physical strength, intellectual brilliance, the opinions of others—and on whatever we believe to constitute our “identity,” our image, as we see it and as others see it. When things change and the gap with reality becomes too wide, the ego becomes irritated, freezes up, and falters. Self-confidence collapses and all that is left is frustration and suffering.

For Buddhism, paradoxically, genuine self-confidence is the natural quality of egolessness. To dispel the illusion of the ego is to free oneself from a fundamental vulnerability. The fact is, the sense of security derived from that illusion is eminently fragile. Genuine confidence comes from an awareness of a basic quality of our mind and of our potential for transformation and flourishing, what Buddhism calls buddha nature, which is present in all of us. Such recognition imparts peaceful strength that cannot be threatened by external circumstances or inner fears, a freedom that transcends self-absorption and anxiety.

Another widespread idea is that without a vigorous sense of self we would barely feel emotions and life would become incredibly dreary. We would lack creativity, the spirit of adventure—in a word, personality. Think about those around you who are endowed with a well-developed, not to say hyperdeveloped, ego. There are plenty to choose from. On the other hand, who are the people who, though differing in sex, age, and race, have manifested a genuine inner confidence that is not based on an “oversized” ego? Socrates, the Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, and countless unsung heroes working in anonymity. Is there really any need to explain the difference?

Experience tells us that those who have managed, even partially, to free themselves of the ego’s diktat think and act with spontaneity and freedom. This is in contrast with the constant paranoia provoked by the whims of a triumphant sense of self. Paul Ekman, one of the world’s specialists in the science of emotion, has been inspired to study “people gifted with exceptionally human qualities.” Among the most remarkable traits shared by such people, he notes, are “an impression of kindness, a way of being that others can sense and appreciate, and, unlike so many charismatic charlatans, perfect harmony between their private and public lives.” They emanate goodness. Above all, writes Ekman, they exhibit “an absence of ego. These people inspire others by how little they make of their status, their fame—in short, their self. They never give a second thought to whether their position or importance is recognized.” Such a lack of egocentricity, he adds, “is altogether perplexing from a psychological point of view.” Ekman also stresses how “people instinctively want to be in their company and how, even if they can’t always explain why, they find their presence enriching. In essence, they emanate goodness.”² Such qualities offer a striking contrast to the champions of the ego, whose presence can be really aggravating. Between the theatrics and occasional ferocity of the rampant ego and the warm simplicity of the egoless, the choice is not a hard one.

Psychopaths, who are unable to feel any empathy for others or any regret for the suffering they inflict upon them, are also ego-supremacists. As Aaron Beck, the founder of cognitive therapy, observes: “Professionals who have worked with psychopaths have been struck by their extreme egocentricity. They are totally self-serving, feel that they are superior to others, and, above all, think that they have innate rights and prerogatives that transcend or preempt those of other people.”³

The idea that a powerful ego is necessary to succeed in life undoubtedly stems from the confusion between attachment to our own image and the resolve to achieve our deepest aspirations. The fact is, the less influenced we are by the sense of our self’s importance, the easier it is to acquire lasting inner strength. The reason for this is simple: self-importance is a target open to all sorts of mental projectiles—jealousy, fear, greed, repulsion—that perpetually destabilize it.

THE DECEPTIVE EGO

In our day-to-day lives, we experience the self through its vulnerability. A simple smile gives it instant pleasure and a scowl achieves the contrary. The self is always “there,” ready to be wounded or gratified. Rather than seeing it as multiple and elusive, we make it a unitary, central, and permanent bastion. But let’s consider what it is we suppose contributes to our identity. Our body? An assemblage of bones and flesh. Our consciousness? A continuous stream of instants. Our history? The memory of what is no more. Our name? We attach all sorts of concepts to it—our heritage, our reputation, and our social status—but ultimately it’s nothing more than a grouping of letters. When we see the word JOHN, our spirits leap, we think, “That’s me!” But we only need to separate the letters, J-O-H-N, to lose all interest. The idea of “our” name is just a mental fabrication.

It is the deep sense of self lying at the heart of our being that we have to examine honestly. When we explore the body, the speech, and the mind, we come to see that this self is nothing but a word, a label, a convention, a designation. The problem is, this label thinks it’s the real deal. To unmask the ego’s deception, we have to pursue our inquiry to the very end. When you suspect the presence of a thief in your house, you have to inspect every room, every corner, every potential hiding place, just to make sure there’s really no one there. Only then can you rest easy. We need introspective investigation to find out what’s hiding behind the illusion of the self that we think defines our being.

Rigorous analysis leads us to conclude that the self does not reside in any part of the body, nor is it some diffuse entity permeating the entire body. We willingly believe that the self is associated with consciousness, but consciousness too is an elusive current: in terms of living experience, the past moment of consciousness is dead (only its impact remains), the future is not yet, and the present doesn’t last. How could a distinct self exist, suspended like a flower in the sky, between something that no longer exists and something that does not yet exist? It cannot be detected in either the body or the mind; it is neither a distinct entity in a combination of the two, nor one outside of them. No serious analysis or direct introspective experience can lead to a strong conviction that we possess a self. Someone may believe himself to be tall, young, and intelligent, but neither height nor youth nor intelligence is the self. Buddhism therefore concludes that the self is just a name we give to a continuum, just as we name a river the Ganges or the Mississippi. Such a continuum certainly exists, but only as a convention based upon the interdependence of the consciousness, the body, and the environment. It is entirely without autonomous existence.

THE DECONSTRUCTION OF THE SELF

To get a better handle on this, let’s resume our analysis in greater detail. The concept of personal identity has three aspects: the “I,” the “person,” and the “self.” These three aspects are not fundamentally different from one another, but reflect the different ways we cling to our perception of personal identity.

The “I” lives in the present; it is the “I” that thinks “I’m hungry” or “I exist.” It is the locus of consciousness, thoughts, judgment, and will. It is the experience of our current state.

As the neuropsychiatrist David Galin clearly summarizes, the notion of the “person” is broader. It is a dynamic continuum extending through time and incorporating various aspects of our corporeal, mental, and social existence.⁴ Its boundaries are more fluid. The person can refer to the body (“personal fitness”), intimate thoughts (“a very personal feeling”), character (“a nice person”), social relations (“separating one’s personal from one’s professional life”), or the human being in general (“respect for one’s person”). Its continuity through time allows us to link the representations of ourselves from the past to projections into the future. It denotes how each of us differs from others and reflects our unique qualities. The notion of the person is valid and healthy so long as we consider it simply as connoting the overall relationship between the consciousness, the body, and the environment. It becomes inappropriate and unhealthy when we consider it to be an autonomous entity.

As to the “self,” we’ve already seen how it is believed to be the very core of our being. We imagine it as an invisible and permanent thing that characterizes us from birth to death. The self is not merely the sum of “my” limbs, “my” organs, “my” skin, “my” name, “my” consciousness, but their exclusive owner. We speak of “my arm” and not of an “elongated extension of my self.” If our arm is cut off, the self has simply lost an arm but remains intact. A person without limbs feels his physical integrity to be diminished, but clearly believes he has preserved his self. If the body is cut into cross sections, at what point does the self begin to vanish? We perceive a self so long as we retain the power of thought. This leads us to Descartes’ celebrated phrase underlying the entire Western concept of the self: “I think, therefore I am.” But the fact of thought proves absolutely nothing about the existence of the self, because the “I” is nothing more than the current contents of our mental flow, which changes from moment to moment. It is not enough for something to be perceived or conceived of for that thing to exist. We clearly see a mirage or an illusion, neither of which has any reality.

The idea that the self might be nothing but a concept runs counter to the intuition of most Western thinkers. Descartes, again, is categorical on the subject. “When I consider my mind—that is, myself, given that I am merely a thing that thinks—I can identify no distinct parts to it, but conceive of myself as a single and complete thing.” The neurologist Charles Scott Sherrington adds: “The self is a unity. . . . It regards itself as one, others treat it as one. It is addressed as one, by a name to which it answers.”⁵ Indisputably, we instinctively see the self as unitary, but as soon as we try to pin it down, we have a hard time coming to grips with it.

IN SEARCH OF THE LOST SELF

Where then is the self? It cannot be exclusively in my body, because when I say “I am proud,” it is my consciousness that is proud, not my body. So is it exclusively in my consciousness? That is far from certain. When I say: “Someone pushed me,” was it my consciousness being pushed? Of course not. The self obviously cannot be outside the body and the consciousness. If it were an autonomous entity independent of one and the other, it could not be of their essence. Is it simply, as we explained above, the sum of their parts, their structure and their continuity? Is the concept of the self simply associated with the body and the consciousness in their entirety? You may notice that we have begun to move away from the notion of the self as owner or essence, and toward a more abstract notion, a concept. The only way out of this dilemma is to consider the self as a mental or verbal designation linked to a dynamic process, to a series of changing relations that incorporate the perception of the outer world, sensations, mental images, emotions, and concepts. The self is merely an idea.

It emerges when we combine the “I,” the experience of the present moment, with the “person,” the continuity of our existence. As David Galin explains, we actually have an innate tendency to simplify complex groupings by making “entities” of them and then to conclude that these entities are enduring. It is easier to function in the world by taking for granted that most of our environment remains unchanging minute by minute and by treating most things as if they were more or less constant. I would lose all notion of what “my body” is were I to perceive it as a whirlwind of atoms that is never the same for even a millionth of a second. But how quickly I forget that my ordinary perception of my body and of all phenomena is just an approximation and that in fact everything is changing at every moment.

This is how we reify the self and the world. The self is not nonexistent—as we are constantly reminded by experience—but it exists as a concept. It is in that sense that Buddhism says that the self has no autonomy or permanence, that it is like a mirage. Seen from afar, the mirage of a lake seems real, but we would have a hard time wringing any water out of it. Things are neither as they appear to exist nor are they entirely nonexistent. Like an illusion, they appear without having any ultimate reality. This is how the Buddha taught it:

Like a shooting star, a mirage, a flame,

A magic trick, a dewdrop, a water bubble,

Like a dream, lightning, or a cloud —

Consider all things thus.

THE FRAGILE FACES OF IDENTITY

The notion of the “person” includes the image we keep of ourselves. The idea of our identity, our status in life, is deeply rooted in our mind and continuously influences our relations with others. The least word that threatens our image of ourselves is unbearable, although we have no trouble with the same qualifier applied to someone else in different circumstances. If you shout insults or flattery at a cliff and the words are echoed back to you, you remain unaffected. But if someone else shouts the very same insults at you, you feel deeply upset. If we have a strong image of ourselves, we will constantly be trying to assure ourselves that it is recognized and accepted. Nothing is more painful than to see it opened up to doubt.

But what is this identity worth? The word personality comes from the Latin persona, for an actor’s mask—the mask through which (per) the actor’s voice resounds (sonat). While the actor is aware of wearing a mask, we often forget to distinguish between the role we play in society and an honest appreciation of our state of being.

We are generally afraid to tackle the world without reference points and are seized with vertigo whenever masks and epithets come down. If I am no longer a musician, a writer, sophisticated, handsome, or strong, what am I? And yet flouting all labels is the best guarantee of freedom and the most flexible, lighthearted, and joyful way of moving through the world. Refusing to be deceived by the ego in no way prevents us from nurturing a firm resolve to achieve the goals we’ve set for ourselves and at every instant to relish the richness of our relations with the world and with others. The effect, in fact, is quite the contrary.

THROUGH THE INVISIBLE WALL

How can I expect this understanding of the illusory nature of the ego to change my relationships with my family and the world around me? Wouldn’t such a U-turn be unsettling? Experience shows that it will do you nothing but good. Indeed when the ego is predominant, the mind is like a bird constantly slamming into a glass wall—belief in the ego—that shrinks our world and encloses it within narrow confines. Perplexed and stunned by the wall, the mind cannot pass through it. But the wall is invisible because it does not really exist. It is an invention of the mind. Nevertheless, it functions as a wall by partitioning our inner world and damming the flow of our selflessness and joie de vivre. Our attachment to the ego is fundamentally linked to the suffering we feel and the suffering we inflict on others. Renouncing our fixation on our own intimate image and stripping the ego of all its importance is tantamount to winning incredible inner freedom. It allows us to approach every person and every situation with natural ease, benevolence, fortitude, and serenity. With no expectation of gain and no fear of loss, we are free to give and to receive. We no longer have the need to think, speak, or act in an affected and selfish way.

In clinging to the cramped universe of the ego, we have a tendency to be concerned exclusively with ourselves. The least setback upsets and discourages us. We are obsessed with our success, our failure, our hopes, and our anxieties, and thereby give happiness every opportunity to elude us. The narrow world of the self is like a glass of water into which a handful of salt is thrown—the water becomes undrinkable. If, on the other hand, we breach the barriers of the self and the mind becomes a vast lake, that same handful of salt will have no affect on its taste.

When the self ceases to be the most important thing in the world, we find it easier to focus our concern on others. The sight of their suffering bolsters our courage and resolve to work on their behalf, instead of crippling us with our own emotional distress.

If the ego were really our deepest essence, it would be easy to understand our apprehension about dropping it. But if it is merely an illusion, ridding ourselves of it is not ripping the heart out of our being, but simply opening our eyes.

So it’s worthwhile to devote a few moments of our life to letting the mind rest in inner calm and to understanding, through analysis and direct experience, the place of the ego in our lives. So long as the sense of the ego’s importance has control over our being, we will never know lasting peace. The very source of pain remains intact deep within us and deprives us of that most essential of freedoms.