Thursday, September 30, 2010
Conquering one of the five Vrittis
What I am about to say has nothing to do with last classes topics but instead is just a blog about a question that I came up with in my head. Well Vyasa says that the detrimental vrittis are caused by the five klesas which are ignorance, ego, attachment, aversion and clinging to life. Well I want to talk about ego. I don't think there isn't a day where everyone in this world wonders what others might think about them. I don't think think there is a person or at least any one who would want to admit that they carry themselves in a different way because they are in college and are smarter than the average citizen because of there college education. I see people around campus and I am guilty of it myself of constantly trying to look acceptable in front of people or constantly wondering what other people think of them. In this world which is celebrity and success driven do you think that people will ever stop their self conscious awareness and ego driven characteristics because it is very hard. I mean if you go by a homeless person 9 out of 10 times you will probably think that that person needs to get a job and stop being lazy. Well you then are being egotistical and thinking that you are better than that person. That homeless person might have an illness where they could never be able to keep a steady job. Another question that I have is, What Edwin Bryant saying is that yoga should help people humble themselves and be less self conscious and egotistical?
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I think that within the Yoga tradition "ego" means more than "egotistical". I think that you are right to suggest that Bryant and others would have us act less egotistical, but that seems to fall under the realm of the Niyama, "devotion to god." From at least one point of view, we can take devotion to god to mean something like humility or recognition of a higher power beyond ourselves.
ReplyDeleteWhen these people talk about the ego, however, they are talking about one of the three constituents of the chitta-mind. Our inner most nature and true self is "the seer." it is pure consciousness and by at least one interpretation (advaita vedanta) it is completely non-diferent from every other consciousness. The only reason that we think we are different is because of the different shapes of prakriti, or matter. Human bodies and brains are one of the many shapes that matter takes. Inside of that body and brain is pure consciosuness. Ego is the part of the mind that delimits or subdues the purely conscious part of ourselves. As II.22 says, "The seer is merely the power of seeing... [it] witnesses the images of the mind." The ego is the part of the brain that unifies all of our sensory experince into a coherent whole. Our atman then looks at the ego and then the mind starts to believe that it itself is our true nature and that somehow it contains the power of consciousness within itslef. This is the same mistake that someone makes when they look at a horse and they think thay they are the horse.
So to sum up, I think that when Yogis says things about getting rid of the ego, they can mean it in the sense that we all use that phrase, but I think it is more likely that they are referring to th recognition that our own minds and thoughts are nothing different than the objects "out there" to which we become attached. As long as we still think about "our thoughts, or "our experience" we are being misled by the ego, but not necesarily egotistical. For example we could think of nothing but the welfare of our best friend for our whole lives. This is not egotistical, but if we think that those thoughts are in some way essential to us as beings, then we are being decieved by the ego.