Earlier quoted context omitted.
Traditionally meditation is said to help.
What does meditation not help in these days
Meditation is "good for nothing". http://www.tricycle.com/interview/good-nothing
The Benefits of a Quiet Ego
51–60 of 114 posts
Re: The Benefits of a Quiet Ego
#52I really liked this — but how to cultivate a quiet ego?
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Re: The Benefits of a Quiet Ego
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure what you're driving at. Beyond relaxation, ego-issues are what meditation has always been about, in multiple traditions if not all.
Given the smugness of many meditation enthusiasts I would worry that meditation would only work to make my ego louder .
Bro, do you even Zen?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAjTN2eYKqQ)
Quite sincerely, my understanding of the Soto zen tradition is "Sit & face the wall. Sit sincerely. Just sit." Everything else is extra. Include the new age hippy bullshit ugh. Including this judgment! Including this pride I take in displaying such wonderous knowledges about something as simple as sitting & facing the wall. lol :)
Re: The Benefits of a Quiet Ego
#54While there might be some benefits, the biggest disadvantage of humbleness is that many people are not prepared for it. It's not how the role models on TV act, therefore it's weird.
People often take ego as an indicator for status or intelligence. If you're not asserting yourself, you don't know as well, or you're not as smart as others. Humbleness doesn't mix well with assertiveness. Assertive people need to be humble around humble people, and the other way around. With just two persons it might work, add more and you get interesting group dynamics.
Re: The Benefits of a Quiet Ego
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
An Introduction to Zen Buddhism by D. T. Suzuk http://amzn.com/8087888766
i have zen mind beginners mind on my phone, read through it time to time, its a good book. http://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/ZMBM-Lectures.html
Yes, this book! I don't recall reading a book with such frequency. I think once I read it cover to cover 3 days in a row - it's full of... I don't know!
Also, I made this mistake too for awhile, the author of "Zen Mind, Beginners Mind" is S.Suzuki, not D.T. Suzuki - different folks, both responsible for establishing Zen practices in the West.
Re: The Benefits of a Quiet Ego
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does meditation not help in these days
I'm not sure what you're driving at. Beyond relaxation, ego-issues are what meditation has always been about, in multiple traditions if not all.
In buddhism, it's been about simply finding ones own mind, free of cultural conditioning & habits. To do this, one practices "let it go". This is the similarity in all traditions - in Zen it might be the "Mu" koan.
Re: The Benefits of a Quiet Ego
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is actually Indian philosophy, based on Upanishads, much older that anything Greek/Roman. Basically, they say that it is your "ego" which prevents you, like a veil, from seeing reality as it is, because your mind is constantly busy, preoccupied with petty desires and childish concerns. Think of the ego as a virus processes with results in a high load average load average: 5.38, 5.30, 4.11 The oldest maxim says - l…
The idea of some "ultimate reality" is so annoying to me. There is regular ol' reality which our mind and senses have evolved to perceive as best they can via natural selection over millions of years. The reasons we have a lot of "scripts" running in our mind is because they have historically helped us survive and pass on our genetics. Turning them off doesn't manifest joy but a genetic dead-end, in aggregate.
Your mind can go off-rails, being able to slow things down (if it's more than imaginary feeling of my self) is good. You don't need everything on every time to survive. Like sleep.
Re: The Benefits of a Quiet Ego
#58Re: The Benefits of a Quiet Ego
#59I really liked this — but how to cultivate a quiet ego?
Spend time with people much smarter than you.
"smarter than you" this requires an idea of the ego / self & ones smartness - this itself could then be something you take virtue in - like "I am cultivating egolessness by spending time with smarter people" lol :) [1]
I think Wittgenstein hit the nail on the head when he said that the most profound philosophical truths can only be told in the form of jokes. This is the origin of humor in happy people.
EDIT: [1] A lot of what I find so amusing in the Zen tradition is that it is so good at articulating these jokes/truths in a minimum amount of words & its rejection of philosophical musing, etc.
Re: The Benefits of a Quiet Ego
#60The gold is at the bottom: “The humble person is probably more aware and accepting of the fact that against a cosmic scale of time and space, every human being is minute.” If there's one thing that will humble you it's trying to fathom the scale of the universe. You think a celebrity matters at these scales? But don't let it make you feel impotent - rejoice at the fact that you're alive, you exist and the world is fu…
I never really understood how the 'the universe is vast' argument is humbling. What does size have to do with importance? That's like saying a bar of gold has less value if you store it in a bigger room. There are many humbling things in the universe, like making an off-by-one error in C++ with more than a decade of programming experience, but the vastness of the universe is not one of those things.