How do you meditate/lose the ego without becoming nihilistic

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

I have found this a hard one to reconcile.

I find that meditation is good to help me not take things so seriously and allows me to not take things so personally in day to day matters.

It makes me see that the ‘self’ is relative so I can either choose to take someone up on something or choose to, or not, do something.

The trouble I find is that with this mindset I realize that ‘bothering’ to get involved with things usually means more stress than just living as simple a life as possible.

It makes me question what is the point of doing anything when I could just sit and meditate and life would be so much easier.

I realize that many of my actions are just egoic reactions and so it feels like they would be redundant and inferior to just sitting and meditating.

It’s not just the ‘little things’ I think this about but just about everything.

I find meditation allows one a sort of suprahuman perspective and I find it very seductive to wish to ‘escape the ego’ completely and bask in the nothingness.

So as this egoless state is alot easier what is the point of still meddling in worldly activities?

So far I have not found a way to reconcile the two yet. I find from my egoic perspective I do find value in ‘being human’ and partaking in worldly activities but I also find it insufficient because on that paradigm ALONE it feels like such a rat-race just mindlessly acting and reacting but more the problem is that with only this perspective I find it stressful and causes me mental and physical stress symptoms.

Conversely though, although the meditation and such offers me respite I find it to be quite insidious in it’s seductiveness, very much like an opiate in that as this mindset seems superior to the common old garden day to day rat-race I have a hard time justifying why I do not spend all my time in egoless oblivion.

So what this amounts to is that due to its seductiveness I find I’ve had to have an all or nothing approach to the ‘ego game’; the meditation state being too seductive to take in bits, no different to any drug which is used for escapism and abandon of worldly matters. I find I have not been able to just do a little meditation as it spurs all these same questionings of my day to day activities hence the reason for writing this post.

So any thoughts on how I could reconcile the two or if indeed there is any good case to do so?

You could make arguments that it is selfish to live all the time in this egoless state but non of these moral arguments come into it as in the egoless state cause and effect is just a matter of the petty finite ego.

2

So, you have the tendency (coming from your inner desire/habit/whatever) to take things personally and seriously. But you don’t like it (or the consequences of it, like physical and mental stress), somehow.
And you are using meditation to subdue the tendency/habit.

The point is you can’t simply sit and meditate even if you desired.
And it would become more and more difficult to simply sit if you really do it, most probably.

I think “sitting and meditating” is pretty egoistic, too.
Being aware is highly egoistic, in a way.

Well … it sounds very egoistic talk (and desire) to meditate to have “superhuman perspective” and to be seduced by some sort of imagination.

I see nothing wrong with being an egoist who try to be egoless in egoistic meditation forgetting worldly activity. :slight_smile:

You can continue to do both and you may find out which one you like better, or other perspective that might reconcile these two.

I do think we are egoistic no matter what we do.
Although there seem to be different kind/level of ego, I don’t think one type/level is automatically absolutely better/superior to others.
I think it’s often better to be honest with ego of different type/level and satisfy/learn them.
In the long run, they can get satisfied and become less hungry/thirsty/demanding.

3

It’s your ego urging you to get up and do things, isn’t it?

Either you listen to it, or you learn to ignore it. I’d recommend engagement with the world; others would recommend transcending it.

4

Are you sure you are “losing ego” in your meditation practices? Some might suggest that ego is never “lost”, it simply becomes unimportant, and forgotten in a state of attenuated awareness. That you are concerned about becoming nihilistic suggests that perhaps you aren’t letting ego go, but are listening to the ego complain that it mustn’t lose it’s importanance. Ultimately, awareness is participation in all your every day experience where ego and and state of being are no longer considered. Awareness is both freedom and understanding that allows one to make every experience more meaningful. It is being with an experience as a constituant, not as an ego observing an experience. Being, not being as.

Or maybe not.

5

I don’t know the answer to that meditation-nihilistic stuff. Maybe it’s a matter of imaging, so that losing the ego means losing the image of self which ultimately makes nothing out of something.

Also, I keep thinking of nihilism as the result of too much intelligence applied to learning about what others think of the world and its ideas. At least, that seems to account for my lack of nihilism anyway. O:)

6

Fleetingly.

7

If a person were in a truly egoless state, what would be the problem with worldly activities? Or do you have a very specific understanding of what “worldly activities” means? At least some Buddhist schools talk about the importance of avoiding the “eight worldly dharmas”:

Getting what you want, and avoiding getting what you do not want
Wanting (instant) happiness, and not wanting unhappiness
Wanting fame, and not wanting to be unknown
Wanting praise, and not wanting blame.

But consider them well - they aren’t examples of all worldly activities, but they are all examples of obsession with self.

The Bodhisattva ideal is all about non-egoic worldly activity. And I don’t think that should be confused with some kind of martyr mentality. Pleasure happens, and that’s pleasurable. Pain happens, and that’s painful. But getting caught up in a cycle of obsessively trying to avoid pain is a recipe for adding unnecessary suffering. Avoiding pain is impossible - the childish ego just makes that all the worse.

8

I don’t believe it’s possible to think an egoless state in terms of the existent and functioning ego. That is the problem when one approaches these things from the sensory or positivist pov. The world looks different and functions differently for those who have undergone psychic transformation or who have achieved the egoless state. Thus, for the Bodhisattva I would think that the phrase “non-egoic worldly activity” is meaningless or simply doesn’t signify. It’s as though the designator “non-egoic” could never function in that syntactic capacity in that “world” and “ego” can be meaningful together but “world” and non-ego" have no definitive or linguistic status really.

9

Theres a lot of tragic truth in that.
According to some, the motivation you can get out of meditation is a deeper one, more true to ones self, than the motivations one initially had, with an uncompromised ego. But I don’t have any experience with finding these deeper motives, what meditation does for me is an end in itself, which does not lead me to a more involved life. On the contrary.

Meditation is a kind of resignation. It is the opposite of any kind of heroism, it is impossible to meditate and take a stance. That is why most new age types are hypocritical in everything political: they simply reject the notion of fighting for something, and, in their comfortable detachment, condemn everyone who is involved.

The cure for this is hard to find, as when you’re detached, the axiom of attachment is invalidated and it’s logic lost. Unfortunately it is only likely to be found again when something is lost that is still of value, mostly a physical condition that cannot be denied. A nihilist can only be taught values by reducing his capital.

10

There is great power in prayer and meditation. Not only that, it doesn’t have to end in nihilism. Also, social activism and prayer and meditation are not mutually exclusive. They do bring their dangers though; mystics who engage in activism sometimes don’t live very long or have difficult lives… here thinking of people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and so on.

11

I’m with you so far.

I don’t think this is the case - at least according to Buddhist tradition, which makes clear that enlightened beings can and do use deluded language to communicate with ordinary people. Deluded language is not meaningless, or else there would be no path to Buddhahood.

12

Prayer is something very different from mediation. I dont think Mandela and dr. King meditated.
Just because they had ideas you like doesn’t make them mystics…

People who meditate are usualyl not politically active. There are sure to be exceptions, but political reformations run on a good dosis of righteous anger, not on contemplative cosmic bliss.

13

The language is not meaningless in itself, but the non-egoic path itself has no linguistic meaning. Also, whatever the path to Buddhahood might be, language will not get you there. The world and its linguistic constructs are all bubbles, so to speak. The essence of nirvana, I suspect, lies in popping them, figuratively or mentally speaking. Not that I would know, not ever having taken that path; but I do pay attention to the way language works and that’s how it seems to me. It’s a way of knowing without any way of expressing that knowledge except through what it isn’t, more or less. For the Christian mystic, of course, that is similar to the Via Negativa, the proof of God through what “he” isn’t.

14

Agape,

I believe I have a sense of what you’re getting at, because I believe I struggle with the same thing. I think the issue you’re grappling with is a very profound one posed by the apparent necessity of a certain degree or kind of self-abnegation, or egolessness, while still somehow being and acting as an embodied human being (ego). This is a spiritual as well as a psychological matter.

Indeed, I agree that one of the primary goals of meditation is awareness, to ‘rise above’ and see through one’s own ego, to grow silent and transparent, to look away from oneself, to surrender oneself to all that is, ever was, or ever will be (achieve selflessness in the moment) - ultimately I believe this means a total surrender of fear, of every kind of fear, doubt, anxiety, even death itself (the point in a sense is to ‘die’), which amounts to an absolute affirmation and embrace of another thing: the opposite of fear, whatever that is [agape]. Without this essential condition, one cannot lose so as to find oneself.

Even meditation is only a means to an end, albeit a wholly essential and necessary means to an individual’s solution to itself. The self is a problem, a riddle even, and the ego is a prison. Each individual, as an embodied ego, is in some degree both master and slave of itself. Self-mastery is the problem I think you’re ultimately bound to run into I think, and this problem is a primary theme of the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, much of Kierkegaard’s work, etc.

While make no mistake, I am far from having achieved this self-mastery, I believe I have indeed had glimpses of it, and somehow there seems to be a balance to be achieved - a supreme balance, integration, and sublimation of all antipodes and opposites one harbors as a single individual. This balance includes the balance of self and ego in action, selfishness and selflessness, etc. Each man is a bundle of his own contradictions, and his evolutionary goal as an individual is to sublimate his own contradictions into balance and harmony; to dance on the needle tip of the present moment where self and selfless, Self and ego, time and eternity meet, where we arrived at the expression of being ‘in the moment’ —the experience of ‘the moment’ has been described as a sort of channeling of a higher and more perfect will than one’s own, that to which we must surrender our own, that by which our fear-driven selfish will is made subservient to something far more pure and profound - ‘thy will be done’

Meditation is a means to self-knowledge and awareness, which are indispensable toward self-mastery.

-af

15

As an example- a staple belief of Buddhist philosophy is that the process of reaching “the state of nothingness” during meditation is just as important as the result. This is because Buddhism stresses the connection of an individuals earthly self to the spiritual, so that any experience of enlightenment can be given back to the physical world, the ultimate goal of Buddhism being for all creatures to achieve transendance.

No offence but the way you treat meditation just looks like your escapeism from the drudgeries of the world. As a whole I find people treat meditation as a spiritual thing, even outside of religion it could be an attempt at mental fluidity with the universe, trying to reach another plane of existance ect. Try to find something meaningful in meditation to share with the world rather than using it to ignore life.

Hope I helped! O:)

16

Agape’s post reminded me of the philosophical problem that recently occupied me: the problem of Nietzschean political philosophy. One could paraphrase the first sentence of my OP as: “Why should a Buddha work toward the actualisation of future Buddhas? And if a Buddha should not, why should those who seek to actualise (men, including) themselves(,) as Buddhas?” Translated into Buddhism, then, my problem becomes the problem of the Bodhisattva.

In another, more recent post, I defined the problem as follows:

Why should an Overman (Nietzsche) care about whether any Overmen emerge in the future, when he himself may be dead and gone? Why should he not just enjoy his insight into the world as will-to-power aloof, like an Epicurean god, unconcerned with humanity down below? What drives him to enter the City (Greek polis), to become political?

“Passion for power […]”
([Nietzsche,] T[hus] S[pake] Z[arathustra], Of the Three Evils, 2.)

[http://groups.yahoo.com/group/human_superhuman/message/504]

And what drives the Bodhisattva is compassion. But what is ‘compassion’ in that sense? The Wikipedia article on Tara links compassion to Mettâ. One should compare the ancient Greek word agapê. The amor fati (love of fate) expressed by Nietzsche and his Zarathustra is evidently a form of agapê. But agapê in turn is to be understood as a sublimation of erôs, the word used to designate the fundamental fact by Plato and his Socrates:

[size=95]In How Socrates Became Socrates, the second part of my Nietzschean project on Plato, I will trace the young Socrates’ course as Plato set it out in Phaedo, Parmenides, and the Symposium. That course, Plato shows, led Socrates into philosophy’s genuine mysteries, the mysteries of the god Eros. I willingly betray those secrets, profane those mysteries, to the degree that I am able, for they are mysteries already profaned by Nietzsche when he named the fundamental fact not after a god but with “a weakening and attenuating metaphor”: will to power. Plato and Nietzsche share great politics because each knew what religions are good for. But they share as well the essential paganism of all philosophy, eros for the earth, and that is the deepest sharing, for each discovered that in being eros for what is, philosophy is eros for eros, for being as fecund becoming that allows itself to be glimpsed in what it is: eros or will to power.
[Laurence Lampert, How Philosophy Became Socratic, page 417.][/size]

The will to nothingness is itself a form of the will to power—of that will which created the ego in the first place! Erôs does not spring from the ego, but vice versa.

The Indian equivalent of Eros is Kama. It would not hurt to go back from mistaken Buddhism, through less mistaken Hinduism, to the ground of both, shamanism:

[size=95]Energy (shakti) arises in the sexual chakra. From there it transcends into the heart chakra, where it is transformed into love. It is the shamanic healing power. If the energy climbs higher, into the forehead chakra, the love-energy is transformed into awareness.
[Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas.]

Shakti (Devanagari: शक्ति) from Sanskrit shak - “to be able,” [compare “might” (n.)] meaning sacred force or empowerment, is the primordial cosmic energy and represents the dynamic forces that are thought to move through the entire universe in Hinduism.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakti][/size]

17

The energy or experience that results in a full embrasure of one’s life as an amor fati is considerably different from meditation that leads one to nirvana or nihilism and the non-egoic state. Somehow, for Nietzsche, the amor fati led to the doctrine of the eternal return; but really, it does not have to go there. Some people just don’t know when to stop; it’s a powerful impulse to take the love of one’s own personal fate and will it to recur eternally. And there’s also a way that it seemed to grow out to encompass every life that ever existed, like a gooey flytrap balloon expanding out inclusively without thought either for the logic or for the real horror involved. Hmm… that was a good movie, The Blob as metaphor for the inflated ego wanting eternal return for everyone and everything. Obviously, this is a matter of an inflated ego gone wild, whereas the aim of psychic and spiritual transformation appears to lead to the opposite result, a loss of ego and a merging with all of existence in a state of bliss.

18

With a complete ‘loss of ego’, there can be no consciousness, and consciousness is a prerequisite of bliss (Sat-Chit-Ananda).

[size=95]Naturally there can be no question of a total extinction of the ego, for then the focus of consciousness would be destroyed, and the result would be complete unconsciousness.
[Jung, Aion, ‘Christ, a Symbol of the Self’.][/size]

‘Loss of ego’, ‘egolessness’, etc. is an illusion…

19

I think the idea is that all of external, physical existence is an illusion perceived through ego identification. Lose the ego and the illusion is lost as well, hence nirvana. I suppose the thought that either everything exists or nothing exists is setting up a false dichotomy by the ego that accepts physical reality as perceived through the senses; the greater truth is that everything exists and nothing exists in the world accepted as as an illusion veiling another deeper reality. Since consciousness is neither lost nor gained, being an eternal verity, that is not an issue.

20

‘The’ idea is mistaken.