Eastern Thought Misunderstood By Western Minds
We are faced with a wave of eastern ways of seeing life, from indian Buddhism, Advaita vedanta, Taoism, to Zen Buddhism and others like Sufi mysticism — often times taken the wrong way.
None of them are originally meant to “make us better” — if by “us” we mean our ego, and as long as “better” conforms to our egocentric values. But to many, especially western proselytes it sure does seem that way. Eastern thought can indeed inform so called “self-help” pursuits, and in some ways it did contributed to spark this trend, but these two different traditions are not practiced in the same spirit, they don’t share the same values.
“Right means can lead to bad ends when they’re in the wrong hands.”
If we are to identify a central core uniting these different eastern cultural expressions this would be represented by the attitude of transcendence — towards the ego-self & towards dependence in general (including that of being hooked on spiritual ideas themselves!).
“The ego is the ball-and-chain locked at its own feet”
This saying implies that the condition of freedom — the deepest kind of freedom; some say the real, or the only kind of freedom — is one in which consciousness is free from ego! We cannot even imagine how our second by second experience would unfold without having this constricting feeling that’s usually felt behind one’s eyes and/or inside the chest, and without its accompanying inventory of conditioned fears, desires, reflexes, moods and thought patterns.
Due to biological-evolutionary and cultural reasons freedom is understood/deeply felt as something very different: the liberty of the ego to do whatever it likes. Or perhaps better said whatever it was conditioned to like and desire.
Having an ego sensation isn’t something that’s necessarily bad — it’s something birthed by Nature and it can even be seen as a crucial part of the esthetic feel of life. Moreover, many individuals which pursued Buddhism for a very long time say that the ego doesn’t necessarily dissapear — “it becomes transparent” is probably the best explanation we’ll get here. But the ego as most of the 7 billions of us know it, is certainly a very ignorant way of being, arguably the greatest exporter of pain and suffering in the world. The inability of ego-transcendence could even add to the famous “great filters” that lead civilizations on a path of self-destruction. Future intelligent life might look back and see most of our great planetary problems — from poverty, ecological destruction, climate change, xenophobia, genocide, inadequate health systems, war & nuclear threat to great inefficiencies in the economic chain — as problems of the ego!
In this context the “self-help” craze — the one making über-egos out of us — is putting human ignorance on steroids, artificially stimulating our self-centeredness, our already heighten sense of self-worth, our inability of caring for & cooperating with those around us, our shameless sense of entitlement and our mindless search for a type of productivity that has no real use other than keeping the conditioned “doer” occupied.
And eastern philosophy doesn’t exactly help either — because paradoxically, the human mind has a way of getting even more ignorant while feasting on knowledge. Our strong ego acts like a filter that transforms any scenario and information so that it suits its preexisting interests (note that there are over 150 cognitive biases that were observed in us, so the ego’s power to alter reality is mighty). This is why in several traditions, particularly in Zen, you first and foremost need to suffer an “ego bashing” through diverse situations imposed on you by the roshi—any linguistic knowledge is less important and it comes after.
Humans are historically caught up in the mere appearance of things, and the western ways are no different (our scientific and philosophical endeavors are, and always were, limited to a minority). We are enthralled by symbols and linguistic labels, so we live in the real world, if there is such a thing, just as much as we live in a symbolic world of fantasy that’s overlaid on that. The following buddhist trope is addressing precisely this danger of missing something concrete & relevant and going for a mere sign instead — in this case, the danger of missing the real point of the tradition:
“The teaching is like a finger that’s pointing you to a good & safe path. So, you have to look along the finger and beyond it to see that path. But many take the finger into their mouth and suck it for their immediate comfort instead.”
Eastern literature and practice focuses on destroying human ego-centrism, but in the west these ideas are mostly taken in as to strengthen egos. Eastern philosophy is about replacing the egoic-state with a feeling of spaciousness, freedom & clarity that cannot be expressed in language — you cannot “carry” the feeling of that enlightened state into another human with the linguistic pitcher. This is why some of the oriental traditions don’t give to this “end-state” much discussion space. Suppose you found out through learning & practice that the human being is able to experience something novel, something which blind evolution hadn’t yet unlocked in us, or if it did this hadn’t offered the individual the impetus to make lots of babies and transmit this ability further through psychological trait inheritance — so then, how would you communicate this new state of consciousness to a society of individuals who never experienced it before? How do you describe a new state of consciousness when you can’t even describe a sense perception? If i say “sweet” you only know what i mean because you already experienced it yourself. If i say “I have a thing for Elizabeth, she appears so interesting and beautiful and makes me feel alive” i haven’t transmitted to you at all how i subjectively feel. You'd just have to make a vague guess based on your personal experience & psychological makeup. Consciousness without the ego is much stranger than any sensation, feeling, state, mood or emotion, so Zen for instance is negligibly concerned in trying to describe it. Words and descriptions are only signs, not the real thing. You might as well write for me a nice poetic description of “love” and i take the paper and put it in my chest pocket — it would be more accurate than keeping it in my memory — but either way, this doesn’t mean “i fell in love” is it?! Eastern philosophy is not about labels! In the west all the rage is either to attach these chic mystic labels onto the ego, or to hijack the practices from their original intent and try to maximize the ego’s pleasures and productivity. In the former case what one really enjoys is not the real thing but the ego’s hoarding of yet another shiny symbol, and in the latter case one ego’s pleasure & productivity often means another thousand beings’ misery and poverty.
We blow our egos to spiritual proportions the size of the universe, instead of gradually melting them into it.
Just like for more than a century we kept using misconstrued evolutionary principles, invoking things like “the survival of the fittest” to excuse our inner animal and its socio-economic behaviors, we’re now in the position of misusing concepts like Dharma (what we would call “the laws of the universe”, but would be more aptly understood as “the nature of things”) and Dao (the great principle of existence) and inadvertently detach ourselves from the moral life and from the feeling of duty towards other beings. “Why should i try to adress the injustices i see happening if they happen by way of the great Dao?”, “Why should i want to change the great dharma that’s governing others?”.. seems to be what’s sometimes understood from these worldviews.
But evolution is not about that dumb phrase, which by the way was invented by someone to justify his economic theories in relation with Darwin’s biological ones. Furthermore human civilisation is built on the shoulders of very “weak” people: Galileo, Newton, Turing, Shannon, Einstein, Salk, etc — statistically having few or average offspring, no drive for leadership and almost no economic interest. The kind of “fit/strong” individuals that we’re often mistakingly identifying in our culture mostly exploited and managed to get ahead of the pack without making any real contribution to art, knowledge and technology — if anything, they delayed their development. What we’re so stubbornly failing to see is that evolution implies networking, ecological integration and cooperation, and it allows a lot of.. well.. evolving! But that doesn’t even matter, because for a self-aware human being to take example from blind processes of nature to inform his moral behaviour is stupid to say the least!
So why so adamant on copying how our ancestors behaved? Why aren’t we seeing these aspects that aren’t “the survival of the fittest”? It’s because the ego acts like a filter that transforms any scenario and information so that it suits its preexisting interests. In the same way, Zen and Taoist principles could unintentionally trigger a remarkable wave of egotism, cynicism, a detached pragmatic lifestyle. But a real understanding of dharma would only wake you to your moral life, not estrange you from this natural and crucial human trait. We must take these teachings to advance the quality of our consciousness, and not use them to become better savages.
Morality IS the dharma of highly evolved conscious beings.
Not getting that from the teachings means that your personal dharma is that of being blind and confused — certainly not an awake mind.
This coming together of eastern ideas with western egos is in the midst of a new-age renaissance, setting things up for great confusion and many sham endeavors. However, modern society lives at a very high frequency, and we will hopefully soon observe development, refinements and clarifications.
One very discussed thing in the sutras is that “if you seek enlightenment, you’ll never get to touch it”, and the reasoning seems clear and sound. As long as there is a desperate need in you to become better somehow.. there is an identification with an ego there that’s leading the search. And should the search be about transcending the ego then it’s something that’s already meant to fail. The only achievement that could ensue would be in strengthening the searcher.
I personally don’t think that transcending the ego means “no ego whatsoever”, but than again.. if one follows the path holding on to that thought they’ll never reach the destination.
image: brokenfingaz
