The ego is not part of the true nature of human beings, but is a social fabrication, inculcated from birth.
Ignorance about our true nature results in us believing the ego is real until we find ourselves alone and socially isolated due to excess caused by our desires and passions.
Within the context of Buddhism, passions are considered a necessary evil. They are evil because when the ego holds sway over a person, the passions would eat us out of house and home.
Merely satisfying our material needs for clothing, food and shelter is not enough.
Without strong adherence to a moral code and the resultant ethical response of right and wrong, we could eat until we become obese, have more clothes than we could possibly wear, and never leave our homes.
Thus, the prudent and wise of us have learned to develop their spiritual yearning to the point where they have incorporated it into their lives, whether it is religious worship or a wholesome hobby.
For me, my hobbies consist of computers and writing: I use my computer to write in my journal, to create electronic music, and to learn about the world and myself.
As for religious worship, I try to spend at least every other day meditating, and reading Buddhist sutras to gain an understanding of the human mind and its essential nature.
Additionally I also read the Bible with an open mind, so as to round out my thirst for the living water of spiritually inspired works.
1 comment:
Ego, or self-will, is an organization of knowledge, characterized by cognitive biases strikingly analogous to totalitarian information-control strategies.
These totalitarian-ego biases function to preserve organization in cognitive structures.
Ego's cognitive biases are ego-centricity (self as the focus of knowledge), "benevolence" (perception of responsibility for desired, but not undesired, outcomes), and cognitive conservatism (resistance to cognitive change).
In addition to being pervasively evident in recent studies of normal human cognition, these three biases are found in actively functioning, higher level organizations of knowledge, perhaps best exemplified by theoretical paradigms in science.
The thesis that egocentricity, benevolence, and conservatism act to preserve knowledge organizations leads to the proposal of an intra-psychic analog o! genetic evolution, which in turn provides an alternative to prevalent motivational and informational interpretations of cognitive biases. &emdash; Anthony G. Greenwald "The Totalitarian Ego Fabrication and Revision of Personal History" (1980).
Post a Comment