Buddhism

what is your understanding of buddhism? most of us understand buddhism as it relates to meditation as the road to transcendence of perception and dissolution of the ego. but buddhism as a philosophy goes way beyond these specific forms or methods. the foundation of buddhist thought centers around the nature of existence itself, the nature of “being”. metaphysically, buddhism has a lot to offer in the way of trying to understand the nature of existence.

particularly, its conceptions of the various levels of existence as both true and false, real and illusory is fascinating. of course it can be debated as to specifics, but in general buddhism describes different levels or manifestations of existence, and these manifestations themselves are contacted directly via the direct experience of consciousness.

admittedly i am not a buddhist, but i have experienced meditation of a different sort, from the “opposite perspective” if you will; buddhism seeks the dissolution of the ego, whereas various other forms of meditation try to strengthen the ego, focusing on the singular I of awareness and self. rather than trying to eliminate or transcend this I, the meditation that i have experienced seeks to expand the self in scope and power, bringing deeper volitional control and awareness to the fundamental deepest-most-part of our being. eventually the self grows sufficiently powerful as to surpass (not transcend) human limitations of experience and perception. this is quite different from buddhist methods, but there are similarities in both of the theories of meditation as they understand the nature of existence, and the relation between limited human consciousness and limitless existence itself, via experience and contemplation.

does anyone have any direct experience with buddhist meditation, or else any insight into buddhism itself?

I think there’s a certain pretentiousness about it. Buddhists (particularly western converts) think they’re “spritually enlightened”, “at one with nature”, etc. When I hear someone say that they meditate, I’m far from impressed (which is what they were hoping to achieve by talking about it).

your skepticism is justified to the extent that you have no personal experience with meditation; the process of self-consciousness exploration is not something that can be explained very well. it is something which must be experienced directly, lived as a vital reality. in this sense, anyone who has never successfully entered a meditative state may be forgiven for not being impressed.

to put it another way: “one does not believe or disbelieve; one simply understands or does not understand.”

Hmm, I should probably try meditation to see what it’s like.

Actually, I can’t be bothered - instead I’ll just sit on the floor doing nothing :stuck_out_tongue:

TTG: I’m a practicing Buddhist. I have some disagreement with your OP, though I’m impressed that you understand that Buddhist philosophy is highly sophisticated and developed.

Could you be more explicit about the meditation you practice and how exactly it is different from “Buddhist” meditation? Also, what is the “view” of your practice - what is its guiding philosophy? The “self” is a highly pliant concept in Buddhism, and I don’t think it is so easily conceptualized and dispensed with. I don’t think that is exactly the Buddhist view.

I can sympathize with the caution which Blunderbuss approaches the issue. While not every Western convert to Eastern ideologies is an asshat, the process does tend to enrich for those with a feeling of superiority. But that makes sense, since people who change paths tend to have an air of personal exceptionalism about them. People who wear their religion on their sleeve tend to be looking to be admired as opposed to actually practicing it. It doesn’t matter whether it is Christianity, Buddhism, or what-have-you.

But that is no reason to dismiss what these different paths have to offer. Meditation is a good example. It is a mental exercise that can exist independently from any tradition. Indeed, there are examples of meditation from practically every developed culture. Meditation happens to be particularly stressed in Buddhism, so it makes sense that meditation is also quite highly developed in Buddhism. There have been numerous studies that have shown meditation to be beneficial.

As for the OP’s description, I’m not sure it is actually that different from how Buddhists conceive meditation. Sitting down and calming the mind can produce many of the results you’ve described but the notion of transcending is seen as an ablation rather than an affirmation. I think the difference might be more of a matter of semantics as opposed to actuality.

Buddhism strikes me as something utterly different from what we Westerns generally accept as a religious doctrine (the relation between man and his Primal Source, the affirmation of the absolute in his common, mundane existence).

According to the Buddha, however, we’re utterly alone in our fight to overcome the illusions of the world and become enlightened human beings. A Christian needs to nurture his ‘faith’ in God and to open his ‘third eye’ (as MM says) in order to find the path to the overcoming of ‘his’ self. The Buddhist sees that everything is in his hands if he really wants to find enlightenment, or rather, enlightenment itself is within himself, as the feature that binds him to all the other living creatures in the world. To find the real nature of one’s ‘self’ is to find that it’s an illusion created by our minds, and realize that there isn’t a thing like ‘my’ existence or ‘our’ existence, there aren’t individual personalities, everything is part of the same process, everything amounts to the same.

everything is up to you, because it’s you that is responsible for the overcoming of the illusions created by your mind. You’re the only one who can destroy the mirage and achieve the real thing, what’s really behind the world that we perceive with our senses. To a Christian, however, no personal effort is capable of surpassing the importance of faith in a personal God, and God’s concern for human redemption.

Without God, the Buddhist situation remains the same, the world continues to be what it is. Without God, the Christian cannot exist.

or is this just a flawed interpretation of both doctrines?

the great problem with this worldview is that it is, like Satyr has just said me in another topic, very beautiful in theory but utterly impracticable in practice. I’d say that most human beings need to believe that they have a real self, that they have ‘individual’ existences in order to live. Of course, most men act as if individuality didn’t exist at all- most men are nothing but mechanical drones, that’s the fact- but they can’t stand this assumption and the consequences of it.

The Romanian writer Cioran said in one of his books that it’s useless to deny the reality of the world (and consequently of everything that exists upon it) when you go on living as if the world was real.

Cioran wasn’t obviously talking about the idealist Buddhist that does achieve the overcoming of attachment and does ‘free’ himself from his ‘selfish’ concerns. He was talking about those men for whom such denial are nothing more than a beautiful word: for instance, the easily satisfied men of our time that adopt Buddhism because it is ‘cool’, like everything related to New Age trends.

Is it valid and reasonable to deny the existence of the ‘self’ in theory and go on living as if ‘it’ did exist in practice?

Maybe there’s a Buddhist around that can show me how flawed my analysis is?

anon, I’m talking to you.

I think the first think to discuss is what Buddhists mean when they talk about the world being an ‘illusion’. Outside of some radical sects, Buddhists do not think that there is some alternate world beyond our senses (though there are occasionally worlds we cannot perceive) but rather that the world (even those we can’t perceive) are impermanent. Nothing lasts, so the happiness I might be feeling now is an illusion because later on, I won’t feel happy. Likewise, the self is an illusion because what is really connecting the ‘me’ that is to the me that was and the me that will be (think Hume)? You seemed to get that in the first part of your description but I felt that it sorta trailed off and got lost in the second half.

As for most men needing it, doesn’t that presume a “Western” narrative? It seems like the premise is built into the argument: “Given that people conceive themselves as authentic, autonomous agents it follows that people need to conceive of themselves as authentic, autonomous agents.”

I can deny the autonomous self, the continuous self, or both . . . but I can still have an alternative conception of the self that allows me to function.

It’s an interesting thing, actually. In Christianity there is often a divide asserted, between whether salvation happens through faith or through works. Since a typical thrust of Christianity is towards “God”, “out there”, really, really far away, faith and works are often seen as somehow fundamentally oriented away from our worldly, degraded existence. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Faith could be seen as basically, relaxation, and works as basically, effort. In fact, both attitudes together seem to offer our best chances at achieving some sort of salvation from the existential mire we might suddenly or not so suddenly wake up and find ourselves “trapped” in. The question then becomes what kind of faith and what kind of effort are best suited to the task, and that opens up a whole can of worms that might be best left unopened. My hope for Christianity is that people will learn to embrace an integrated approach such as this, with emphasis on the psychology of faith and belief. Many Christians are interested in such an approach, and I wish them the best. When faith is seen with more clarity and depth, it is no longer seen as some sort of magic pill. Likewise, when works is understood in relation to faith, what need is there for crippling guilt?

Questions regarding “self”, “selflessness”, and the like are usually misunderstood. The “self” which is refuted philosophically in the Buddhist tradition is specifically “atman” in a historical sense - Gautama Buddha lived at a time when the Brahmanical tradition was both strong yet vulnerable to various social forces that were taking place. This “self” that is refuted is basically the intuitive “soul”, concretized by so many religious and philosophical traditions. It is not the “person” in a conventional, relative sense. It is also not specifically the Freudian ego, though egoism is certainly related in the long run to this intuitive soul. The “self” which we don’t possess and is not itself a possessor is very carefully defined in the Buddhist tradition as that which is single, independent, and permanent. In the end, “achieving selflessness” isn’t actually a goal of Buddhists, since there is no such self to ever be found or even inferred in the first place.

The sense of self that we possess, since it is not tied to any fixed entity or idea, is not itself a problem - in fact it is the basis for our undertaking of a “spiritual” (or any other) path in the first place. That sense of self can be expanded or contracted, added to or subtracted from, made more solid or made more malleable, grasped at firmly or given away - completely let go of. Many of the images used to talk about Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are connected to an understanding of self, and what it means to be genuine. So just as we could see a tree as neither selfish nor disparate, but simply a “being” that takes what it needs yet is constantly giving, we could live as simply and with as much dignity. And just as the sun doesn’t run around shining here and there for the sake of this and that, yet simply shines, so intelligently overcoming selfish habits doesn’t make us into victims of some need to be of service.

One more thing regarding “self” and “selflessness” - most people see “giving up the self” as giving up power in some sense - they say its all well and good not to be too egotistical as long as it doesn’t go too far, because we wouldn’t get anything done in the world if it weren’t for our egos. I think this is a misunderstanding. It is in fact the fixation on the self that prevents us from achieving our potential as fully integrated human beings. What if the sun started to think of itself as an independent entity, with an ego in need of constant coddling? Imagine that! In my own experience in life, even all of my basic worldly success seems to have always come from letting go of fixation on myself, and my personal territory. In the Mahayana tradition, there are said to be three principle Bodhisattvas, working for the benefit of beings in all the worlds of Buddhist cosmology. They are the Bodhisattvas of wisdom, compassion, and power. Vajrapani, the representation of power, signifies the notion that realizing egolessness is directly related to manifesting power in the world, though not the kind of delusional ego-based power we tend to think of.

Also, I see that Xunzian has posted while I wrote this. I see this post as a further fleshing out of his more concise statement.

What’s the context of this discussion? Are we talking about Buddhism as a set of explanatory beliefs about the world, or a set of pragmatic approaches to self-help?

Buddhism as a set of explanatory beliefs is crap. Statements like “the world is illusion” or any such thing is not “true” in remotely the same way that Physics is true, or Math is true, or Logic is true.

Buddhism as an approach to self-help has some valid points to be sure.

Well the first is philosophy and the second is psychology. In the Buddhist tradition, those are integrated - they strongly relate to each other.

An illusion, according to two definitions from the dictionary:

Aren’t physics and logic epistemological methods for undertaking to investigate reality as it is as opposed to how it appears to be? Isn’t math an investigation into realities unseen by the naive realist?

Many Buddhist teachers say that reality is “like” an illusion, so as to dispel that idea that they are talking about the world as a dream, or a hologram for instance. This isn’t what they mean by illusion.

I agree.

Yes, that’s true. But that’s a problem I have with Buddhism – I don’t believe the degree of its correlation is rationally warranted. “The world is illusion” is a vague statement with some truth in psychology (at least, in one of its interpretations), but with no justification in philosophy other than the extreme consideration that “we’re in the matrix”. Also note that I’m judging Buddhism based on logic, here, not the other way around.

Well, no. Physics can be thought of as methods for investigating reality, sure, but not whatsoever with any emphasis on how it appears to be. Rather, the emphasis is to discover underlying principles that produce all levels of reality, from the quantum (which is rather counter-intuitive) to the macroscopic, which is much more intuitive, and in the context of physics, not illusory at all. (Even the quantum level of things is merely counter-intuitive, but not illusory.)

Definitely not. Math and logic investigate a priori truth. “Realities” would be a contestable point, but regardless, again, the emphasis is on finding the truth with proof, not on overcoming things that are unseen or in any sense illusory. Many great mathematics problems have been to prove beyond a doubt things that are intuitively obvious. In fact, no one believes the Riemann Hypothesis is false, but if you can PROVE that it’s true, you get a million dollars and an instant appointment to Harvard.

But to bring it all back: the world, in every common-sense and physics approach – and psychology approach, as long as we aren’t talking abnormal psych – the world is NOT illusion. The world CONTAINS illusions, but for the most part, our perceptions of the world are consistent. The defining feature of illusions is that of conflicting data. Your initial sense experiences may tell you one thing, but another sense, or logic / careful measurement may tell you another.

Here’s a good example:
http://www.sightsavers.org/images/f_1826optical-illusion-1.jpg

Three lines that look to be of different lengths, but are actually of the same length. It’s an illusion because while our sight tells us one thing, careful measurement tells another. But by and large, things we “see” in the world end up having the same basic properties, upon careful measurement, as we initially perceive. Sure, the world contains illusions, but it isn’t one itself, in a meaningful sense.

I’m aware of that too – but that’s why I think Buddhism should be understood more as a self-help approach than as having anything meaningful to say Philosophically.

You’re not understanding what is meant by “illusion” in Buddhism. There’s nothing matrix-like about the idea. Buddhism isn’t afraid to engage in simplifications - simplifications are very powerful. But that particular simplification - illusion - is a simplified way of referring to complexity. It’s an invitation to investigate our world more fully. It’s not an “answer”, and if it is seen as such, that is a misunderstanding.

Actually, yours is a more sophisticated statement than mine was to be sure. But if I see my face in the mirror and think there is another person in the room (to give a radical example), am I justified in that belief? No, the belief was clearly mistaken.

You’re misunderstanding me.

You’re misunderstanding me.

Fine with me. I’m curious though, what do you think is meaningful “philosophically”? And have you ever undertaken a serious study of Buddhist philosophy?

You may be right. But if I am misunderstand “illusion”, can you give me a precise definition? (I was going along with your example… my perception of the Buddhist meaning of the term is not that the world is illusion, but that the importance of the world, or rather of wordly things, is illusion.)

Sure, that would be an illusion in the sense I was talking about. But note that that doesn’t happen very often. The majority of our sensory experiences turn out to not be illusions.

Please enlighten (heh!) me.

Please note that I don’t use “meaningful” to mean “important”, I use it literally. The question of what is meaningful in Philosophy is actually a long-standing one, which was approached admirably by the Logical Positivists and other folks mostly around the early 1900s. It’s a complex topic to get into exhaustively, but I can easily give you quick examples of statements or questions that I think are meaningful, or can be meaningful when made precise in a reasonable way. (Also note that I am asserting the meaningfulness of these statements, not whether they are true or false.)

  1. A or ~A
  2. There is no notion of human identity that is both consistent and intuitive.
  3. Humans do not have free will.
  4. Morality is relative.
  5. There is no god.

No, not at all. I’m speaking entirely as a dilettante, if even that. I’m confident in my philosophical analyses given that I’m getting my facts right, but there’s a high risk that I’m not getting my facts right, so please feel free to correct me if it looks like I’m using the wrong definition, or assuming something incorrect.

These statements all find their home in Buddhist philosophy. A or ~A is the basic element of Buddhist logic, as in any logic. The question of human identity is perhaps the central question addressed by Buddhism. The question of free will is addressed, as is the relativity of morality and the existence of a divine creator. I’m uncertain if you were asserting otherwise or not.

To address the question of the use of the term “illusion”, I’ll skip the step by step approach and give you a general overview in my own interpretation. Buddhist philosophy is almost always at least initially concerned with distinguishing between what is real versus false, stable versus unstable, permanent versus impermanent, etc. This is simply what we do, and it makes sense to do it. For instance a real mushroom versus a false mushroom makes a very big difference to us as physical, biological beings. Likewise, we also care philosophically about issues such as whether we have free will or not - is the idea true or false? Though the question may seem very abstract to many people, for some people there are actual consequences to whether we think one way or another. But to properly explore what exactly we mean by real and unreal, it is necessary to look more closely at their definitions. Various definitions make sense in various contexts. In physics “real” may have a particular meaning that doesn’t have relevance in the context of some other discipline for instance. Buddhist thought, with its particular orientation, is very concerned with the relationships between imputed “things”. That we see things as separate, independent, and permanent is the basic habitual delusion that always haunts us - “haunts”, because we always suffer when we trust something that is inherently untrustworthy. From that habit we tend to simplify relationships too much - for instance we say “this caused that” without regarding the complexity of necessary conditions that must also be present. In the end Buddhist philosophy entails a radical refutation of any form of essentialism or atomism, and therefore of even the most subtle dualistic habits. It is an orientation away from atomism and towards context, away from thing-ness and towards process, away from permanence and towards flux. I think this basic understanding naturally informs an understanding of any philosophical issue or dilemma that happens to be at hand. It is less a ready answer than it is a trustworthy epistemic foundation.

To sum up, illusion in Buddhism is a reference to contingency and flux - that everything that exists, exists impermanently and relatively.

I do think the Buddhist approach is at base “self help”. For instance if someone is simply interested in the study of physics, why wouldn’t they just study physics? Yet Buddhist philosophy is of a universal character, and I do think it’s insights are relevant in a wider context. The Buddhist path, in a classical sense, begins with a recognition of suffering whether overt or subtle (i.e. stress, dissatisfaction, etc.). That is simply the orientation of Buddhism - it is about direct contact with and understanding of one’s own mind and its relationship to the larger world. It is an exploration of what it is like to be a human being, and in what ways the character of that experience is both fixed and malleable.

Time for me to get in on this subject. I consider myself a practicing Buddhist (Tibetan Vajrasattva and Dzogchen practices), but I am a lot more then that. I find that the Buddhist philosophies are INCREDIBLY useful to me. In fact, I base most of my own philosophy on Buddhism and Hinduism.

I think the reason why westerners in general have trouble with Buddhism is because it was translated from Asian languages which are quite different then our own. There are not so many words in Asian languages, so the way things are described seems overly simplistic to the average western mind. That is why I am taking Buddhism, westernizing it, and making a whole new philosophy based upon it. When a Buddhist talks of the illusory nature of reality, they don’t mean that the world is fake. They mean that reality is not what it appears to be. This really is not any new concept. The idea of what reality is keeps changing as we as humans learn more. The more we learn, the more accurate our idea of reality becomes. But what Buddhism teaches you to do is skip all of the collecting and analyzing empirical data, and look beyond to find the true nature of existence. It is not, however, something we do using only our rational mind. That is why we meditate, do yoga, and most other practices as well. The point is to find our true nature. Our true nature is that of oneness with the universe, but that cannot be perceived or learned. It MUST be experienced to be realized fully. During meditation we observe silence. Silence is where intuition comes from. Intuition just pops into our minds, and is then only interpreted and translated into words by our brains. But these words do not exist before we translate them as such. Truth does not come in word format. So in order to observe truth, we need to clear our mind of words. After we achieve total mental silence, we can observe the true nature of reality. It is kind of like a muddy river. You cannot see what is in the river when the mud is stirred up. From this we may conclude there is only muddy water in the river. But once we let the water settle then we can see the fish, the plants, the rocks, and all of the other things that are in the water.

It is also interesting to note that Tibetan Buddhists DO believe in the existence of other worlds which we cannot perceive. However, this is not what they mean by true nature of reality. This is more or less a metaphysical breakdown of the universe. It also helps us understand why the self is so de-emphasized. I always find the Tibetan Wheel of Life to be a useful tool in explaining existence. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhavacakra

The wheel is divided into six sections which represent the Six realms (or Worlds) of Existence. These Six Worlds are:

  1. The World of Devas or Gods
  2. The World of Asuras (Tibetan: lha ma yin; Sanskrit: asura) (Demigods, Titans, Fighting Demons)
  3. The World of Humans
  4. The World of Animals
  5. The World of Pretas (hungry ghosts)
  6. The World of Hell

I call these the six levels of existence. For those of us that follow physics, especially particle physics, it is necessary for there to be 11 different dimensions to explain the vibrational movements of certain subatomic particles. We subsist on the human realm of this spectrum which is height, width, depth, and time. Animals exist on these same dimensions except they have awareness of a 5th dimension which is why they can sense things which we cannot. Some humans also have an awareness of the 5th dimension as well. The other beings mentioned on the wheel of life all live in their own different set of dimensions. However, only Devas can exist on the 11th dimension, which is the God dimension.

Next thing it is important to understand is the concept of impermanence. Impermanence is the nature of the universe. Our egos are illusory because they are impermanent. They are the part of us that dies. The rest of us does not. At death, the body turns back into organic matter and becomes part of the earth, eventually making new organisms from the same material. Our spiritual selves, or our life force, then moves on and is reborn into one of the six worlds listed above depending on whether or not we ascend, descend, stay on the same level, or transcend. Only the part of us that we are so proud of, our ego dies. Then we are reborn anew, and grow new egos all over again. Ego death and rebirth are an integral part of some Tibetan rituals. The ego is actually very fragile. It cannot survive for very long. It seems like we exist as one continuous ego until we die. But this too is an illusion. When we sleep, after reaching delta wave sleep, the deepest of the sleep cycles, the ego dies. We cannot live for long without this ego death and remain sane. That is why sleep is an integral part of our lives. We must experience death and rebirth on a daily basis in order to maintain our egos and our selves as they are. So you are probably wondering, how could anyone know this? Again, it is experience. In Dzogchen there is a practice called “natural light” where the practitioner learns to make his or her self lucid during dreaming phases. After lucid dreaming is totally mastered, however, then the practitioner can take it even a step further and become lucid during the non-dreaming delta wave sleep. Everyone that has done this has explained the experience to be the same as dying, and the descriptions of dying from near death experiences. It is really quite fascinating. I am a dream yoga/natural light practitioner (hence the name) but I am not nearly so good as to be able to experience lucid delta wave yet. I look forward to the day…

So to answer the questions on the usefulness of the philosophy behind Buddhism, without the practice I would say none. With the practice, I would say it is incredibly useful. I would not be able to grok all the things which I add to the Buddhist philosophy and make my own if it were not for the practice. That is why Buddhism is ultimately useful to me as a philosopher. I also have noted that Tibetan Buddhism seems to be the most successful religion in the world. Most other religions advocate peace and compassion but never follow through. Buddhists don’t wage war, and lest they stray from the practice, always have compassion for their fellow man. There are not any other religions I know of which you could say this about. I like Hinduism a lot too though, as Buddhism was founded upon it and it still has some very useful points and practices.

-Metaphysician

Also, I thought it necessary to add that Buddhists are not alone in their quest for enlightenment. We call on the help of higher beings frequently, whether they be Gods or those who have attained enlightenment/Buddhahood. Mantras are the tool for achieving this. We recite mantras to help us with our practice or ask for any type of help in general. Not all mantras are prayers though. Some are simply chanting of seed syllables in order to affect our energies and open up the chakras. Tibetan Buddhism is especially energy conscious. Mahayana is not so much. But it still DOES involve energy, in the form of prana which is like wisdom. Mahayana practitioners gain prana through meditation, Yoga, and Tai Chi. Dzogchen and Vajrasattva practitioners have many, many other methods for increasing energy and also do rituals involving energy. There are two main types of energy in Buddhism. There is Prana and there is Chi. Chi is literally life force, and from this we can gain prana.

Here is one of the mantras I often recite translated to English so that everyone can understand it:

It is called “The Vajrasattva 100 Syllable Mantra”

Om! (crown chakra seed syallable) Vajrasattva, preserve the bond!
As Vajrasattva stand before me.
Be firm for me.
Be pleased for me.
Love me passionately.
Grant me siddhi (perfection).
and in all things make my mind most excellent.
Hum(Heart chakra seed syllable) Ha Ha Ha Ho (Laughter)
Blessed one! Vajra of all the Tathagathas (enlightened beings)
Do not abandon me!
Be the Vajra bearer, being of the great bond
Ah, Hum, Phat (pronounced Aw, hoom, fay, an end to a prayer kind of like amen)

Also it is good to note that vajra translates to “diamond” and vajrasattva to “diamond vehicle”.

Hope that helps,

-Metaphysician

I am practicing buddhist meditation (zazen). To me buddhism it´s not so much a religion, but rather a philosophy and a practical methodology. to me it is a method for being conscious .

but i think there´s some confusion here considering the rereference of this word “ego”. i understand in the first place the “ego” that one is trying get rid of as the social ficton that causes us unvoluntary and robotic emotions of pleasure and pain when we are trying to follow its lead.

Self is not the cause of dissatisfaction/angst/suffering/dukkha (Pali)…or whatever you wanna call it. Attachment is.

There are 4 truths that the Buddha described in his teachings. If you realize them as true, then I guess you’re Buddhist – or Buddha-esque in terms of how you comprehend the nature of your existence on the planet.

But you can also call yourself a Speckled Green Tomato Spore, and nobody who’s a Buddhist will have a problem with that. And if you say you aren’t a Buddhist or an SGTS, then they’ll smile a little and sigh. We get the language thingie.

I’ve never read a single Western philosopher comparable to Nagarjuna, btw.

The ego is a form of attachment. It is attachment to the self.

Nagarjuna rocks! BTW