A Good Buddhist Ego

We hear so much about how our sense of self is a problem that many of us think that we have to put our sense of self aside from the very beginning.

But it doesn’t work that way. The Buddha also pointed out that a healthy sense of self is a necessary part of the path. And it’s not something you can decide to put aside until it’s time to put every sense of self aside, healthy or unhealthy.

The first taste of awakening, called stream-entry, comes when you let go of the path after you’ve developed it for a while. You let go for a little bit, you encounter something totally unfabricated, unconditioned, and your immediate reaction is to grab on to it, which is why your awakening is not yet complete. But the fact that you’ve experienced a level of consciousness that has nothing to do with any of the aggregates, not even the aggregate of consciousness, means that when you come back, you’ll never think of identifying with the aggregates ever again. You never hold to the view that you are the aggregates or that you own the aggregates or that they’re in you or that you’re in them.

But there’s still a lingering sense of self, and this will linger around you until you attain total awakening. Only the experience of total awakening can let go of that. It’s not something you can decide to let go. When it’s cut off completely, a sense of “I am” is gone. But you can still function, and function well.

Up until that point, though, you need a sense of self to be confident that, yes, you can do this path, and then, two, you’ll benefit from doing it, and, three, that you can watch what you’re doing, observe, make comments, make improvements. All these three roles for the self will be necessary all the way up to the end.

Now, there’ll be times in the course of the meditation when you’re simply not thinking in terms of self. You get the mind into concentration and you don’t think about the fact that you’re doing the concentration, it’s just a process that you’ve mastered so smoothly by that point it becomes almost automatic. Your sense of self is not called into question. There’s nothing to obstruct what you want to do.

It’s when you meet up with obstructions: That’s when your sense of self gets involved. When things go smoothly inside, there’s nothing to aggravate your sense of self. So, you do have these periods when you’re not thinking in terms of self at all, but then when aggravation comes, when obstructions come, then “you” come back. There’s “you” versus “what’s not you.”

The fact that the sense of self can keep coming back means that you’ve got to train it. In Western psychology, they talk about the functions of a healthy ego, and in Buddhism they talk about the same functions.

They don’t term them ego functions. But they’re ways in which you have to function. And there has to be an underlying sense that you are responsible for your actions and you will benefit from the results. After all, the Buddha once told the monks, “Let go of whatever is not yours, and that will be for your long-term welfare and happiness.” Here he’s teaching not-self, but he’s also saying, “It’s for your happiness.”

This is what a healthy ego function is: something you do that will lead to true happiness, and there’ll be a sense that you’re responsible and you will benefit.

So, you want to be skillful in how you go about that. There are five qualities that the psychologists talk about. Buddhism recommends all five, although with different names.

The first one is anticipation. You see that there are dangers down the line that you have to prepare for and you do what you can to prepare for them. If you’re just blissfully in the present moment, not concerned about the future, thoughts of this sort wouldn’t occur to you. But when you realize that your actions will make a difference, and so you’ve got to prepare, there’s a sense of self in there. And the Buddha says that sense of self lies at the basis of all that is skillful: that you’re responsible and you will benefit from taking responsibility in a skillful way.

What the psychologists call anticipation, the Buddha calls heedfulness. It’s an important quality to develop. Even in the passages where the Buddha talks about the importance of focusing on the present moment, it’s in the context of death contemplation, reminding you that you’ve got to prepare for death.

There’s one where he says you put aside thoughts of the past, thoughts of the future, concerns for the future, and you focus on what’s arising in the present moment. Why do you do that? Because you have to do it today. If you don’t do it now, it’s not going to get done. Tomorrow you may die.

In other words, this is the heedful response: focus on what you can do in the present moment. We’re not here just to register the present moment, say, “Oh, it’s like this.” We’re here to notice that there are good potentials and bad potentials from which we shape our experience of the present moment. So we want to learn how to do it well.

On another occasion the Buddha told the monks to think about death on a regular basis. One of the monks said, “Well, I do that every day. Once, a day I think about the fact that I’m going to die.” Another monk said, “Well, I think about it twice a day.” Another monk said, “Well, I think three times a day.”

It finally got down to one monk who said, “When I breathe in, I say, ‘May I live to breathe out, so I can accomplish a great deal.’” Another monk said, “When I’m eating and I’ve got a mouthful of food, I think, ‘May I survive to chew this food before I die. I can accomplish a great deal in that little moment of time.’”

The Buddha said, of all the monks, only the last two were really heedful. In other words, they focused on what can be done right now, and they didn’t put it off. So, when you use death contemplation, it’s not just a matter of thinking, “death, death, death” all the time. It’s just being very alive to the fact that there’s work that has to be done. If you die before that work is done, you could suffer a great deal. So, you work on it now. That’s a healthy ego function.

The second is altruism, which in Buddhism is called compassion or goodwill. We realize that if our happiness depends on other people’s suffering, they’re not going to stand for it. They’re going to do what they can to destroy it. So, if you want a happiness that lasts, you have to take their happiness into consideration, too.

The story goes that King Pasenadi was in his bedroom in the palace, one-on-one with one of his favorite queens, Mallika. In a tender moment, he turns to her and says, “Is there anyone you love more than yourself?” You know what he’s thinking. He wants her to say, “Yes, your majesty: you.” And if this were Hollywood, that’s what she’d say. But it’s not Hollywood, this is the Pali Canon. She says, “No, there’s nobody I love more than myself. Don’t be a fool. How about you? Is there anyone you love more than yourself?” And the king has to admit there’s nobody he loves more than himself, either. That’s the end of that scene.

So the king leaves the palace, goes to see the Buddha, and tells him what happened. The Buddha says, “You know, she’s right. You could go the whole world over and not find anybody you love more than yourself. In the same way, though, everybody else loves themselves just as fiercely.” So, the conclusion he draws from that is not that it’s a dog-eat-dog world. The conclusion is, you should never harm anybody or cause them to do harm, for the reason I just said: If your happiness harms them, they’re going to try to destroy your happiness. If you get them to do harm, that’s going to become their bad karma. They’re really going to resent you.

So compassion is a healthy ego function. You’re compassionate because it’s for your own true well-being.

The third ego function is suppression. This is not repression. With repression, if something negative comes up in the mind, you deny that it’s there. With suppression, you know that it’s there, but you simply say No. This corresponds to the Buddhist principle of restraint. You have impulses that you know are going to be unskillful, so you learn how to say No effectively.

The Buddha said this is one of the measures of your wisdom. If you see there’s something you like to do but will give long-term bad results, you know how to talk yourself into not wanting to do it. Or if there’s something you don’t like to do but will give good results, you learn how to talk yourself into wanting to do it. That’s wisdom. You know how to stop yourself from doing something that will cause you trouble down the line.

In Buddhism, that’s called restraint. It’s an important principle in the practice. Even though you may have some defilements circling around inside your mind, you don’t let them roam out and prowl around the neighborhood. You learn how to say No to them.

That goes together with the principle that psychologists call sublimation. The Canon doesn’t have a term for that, but basically it says that, rather than looking for happiness in your fascination with thinking about sensual pleasures, you look for it elsewhere. That’s what the Buddha actually means by “sensuality,” by the way: not so much the pleasures themselves, but your fascination with thinking about them, planning for them, adjusting the fantasies: “What should I have for dinner tonight?” “How about this?” “No, how about that?” “How shall I fix it?” We can go on and on and on.

The Buddha says there’s a much better pleasure you can learn to enjoy: the pleasure of the concentration.

This is why concentration practice is such a necessary part of the path. You get a sense of ease, a sense of well-being, that you can allow to flow through the body. One of the images the Buddha gives is of a lake with a spring of cold water. The cold water wells up from underneath and fills the whole lake with cool water. You want to learn how to meditate in such a way that you have that sense of well-being filling the body, just by the way you breathe, by the way you settle in with the breath. When you have that pleasure, then it’s a lot easier to say No to other, more unskillful pleasures.

That, too, is a healthy ego function. You realize that you have the choice of which kind of pleasures you’re going to pursue. Some pleasures will get in the way of the path, but other pleasures are actually part of the path.

So there’s nothing wrong with indulging in the pleasures that are part of the path. The only warning there, of course, is that when you’re practicing concentration and the breath gets really comfortable, don’t drop the breath and wallow in the comfort. You stay with the breath. That’s what’s going to produce the comfort. Let the sense of comfort work on your body, work on your mind. It’ll do its work. All you have to do is make sure that you’re diligent in maintaining the causes. That’s how you can experience the pleasure of concentration without being overcome. Which is an important skill.

Finally, the fifth ego function that the psychologists talk about is humor. Again, Buddhism doesn’t talk much about humor, but there are lots of examples of humor in the Pali Canon. You may say, “I’ve looked through the Pali Canon. I don’t see much humor,” but you’ve probably been looking in the wrong places.

It’s mainly in the section about the rules, which is an interesting fact. Each of the major rules has a story that goes along with it, telling who misbehaved, a monk or a nun. When word gets to the Buddha, he calls the monk responsible in and says, “Did you actually do this?” The monk says, “Yes, I did.” Then the Buddha gives reasons for saying, “That’s not a skillful action. That’s worth a rule.”

But the stories can be very humorous. There’s one about a monk who had psychic powers. He didn’t have much of a memory, though. When it came his turn to give instructions to the nuns, he could remember only one verse of the Buddha’s teachings. So he would repeat that verse over and over again.

The nuns, of course, didn’t like this. One day, it came his turn again. The nuns learn about this and they say to one another, “Oh, this is not going to be effective at all. He’s just going to repeat that same old verse over and over again.” But they go anyhow. After the formalities at the beginning of the talk, he says, “Okay, here’s today’s talk,” and he starts repeating the verse. The nuns turn to one another and they say, “Didn’t we tell you? This is not going to be effective at all.”

Well, he overhears them. Now, as I said, he had some psychic powers, so he decides to put on a show. He levitates up into the air, splits himself into many images of himself, some of them emitting fire, some emitting water, some emitting smoke. They’re saying that verse and many other verses by the Buddha.

The nuns are watching this and they say, “Wow! This is the most effective Dhamma talk we’ve ever seen.” He gets carried away, so he keeps on displaying his powers until after sunset. Then he dismisses them. They have to go back to the nunnery in the town. But the town gates back in those days would be closed at sunset. There would be a pavilion outside for travelers who came too late. So, the nuns spend the night at the pavilion. The next morning, the gates are opened, the nuns come filing into the city, and the people say, “Oh, here come the nuns back from spending the night with the monks.”

Word of this gets to the Buddha. From that point on, the monks were not allowed to teach the nuns after dark.

There’s another case where a monk with psychic powers had defeated a fire-breathing serpent. Word of this gets out, and the lay people say, “Gee, we’d really like to make merit with that monk. What can we do to give him something special?” So they go to consult with some monks. They ask, “What is it that monks don’t usually get?” But they consult the wrong monks. They get a bad group that says, “What we usually don’t get is hard liquor.”

So the next day, everybody in town has prepared a glass of hard liquor for the monk. He takes one glass after another, after another, after another, around the city. Then he passes out at the city gate. The Buddha comes along with some other monks. He has them carry this monk back to the monastery. They lay him down on the ground with his head toward the Buddha. The monk has no idea where he is, so he tosses and turns, tosses and turns, until his feet are pointing to the Buddha, which is not what you do.

The Buddha’s comment is, “Before, didn’t he show respect to us?” “Yes.” “Is he showing respect to us now?” “No.” “And before, didn’t he do battle with the fire-breathing serpent?” “Yes.” “Could he do battle with the salamander now?” “No.”

That’s why we have the rule against monks drinking alcohol.

So, there are examples of humor in the Pali Canon. The important thing about humor as an ego function is that it helps you step back from what you’re doing and see where it’s incongruous or ironic. You can see where you’re not being consistent with your values.

Now, the reason humor is included in the section about the monk’s rules, I think, is because they wanted to show you, yes, the people who set forth the rules did have a sense of humor. There’s nothing worse than having to live by a code of rules made by humorless people. At the same time, the stories make you side with the Buddha in seeing that that behavior really was stupid.

So, you can see that, of these five ego functions that the psychologists talk about, Buddhism teaches them all as well. And they all do involve having a sense of self, that you are responsible for your actions and you will benefit from being careful in what you do.

There’s a sixth healthy ego function that the psychologists don’t mention. That’s a sense of shame. Now, there are two kinds of shame. There’s the shame that’s the opposite of pride. That’s an unhealthy sense of shame. The Buddha doesn’t recommend that.

But then there’s the shame that’s the opposite of shamelessness, where you break the rules, do what you want, and you don’t give a damn about what other people think. The kind of shame where you do care about what good people think about your behavior is healthy. As the Buddha said, without that sense of shame, the world would be unprotected. People would do all kinds of horrible things—as we see around us, with shameless people in power.

When you have a healthy sense of shame, you want to look good in the eyes of the wise. There’s a sense of “you” there, a healthy you: a sense of self-respect, and a sense that you will benefit from being skillful in your actions.

So, at the times when you do have a sense of self in the practice, make sure that it has these six qualities. That’s because, when your sense of self becomes healthy like this, then when the time comes to let it go, you’re not letting it go out of any neurotic anger or fear. You’re letting it go because it’s been a helpful tool that you’ve used, and you realize you’ve completed your work. You don’t need the tool anymore. You can put it down.

The image the Buddha gives is of a raft. You’re on this side of the river, which is dangerous, and you want to go to the other side of the river, which is safe. There’s no bridge over the water, and no Nibbana yacht to come pick you up.

So, what do you do? You take the twigs and branches and leaves on this side of the river, you make them into a raft, and then, holding on to the raft really tight and making an effort with your arms and legs, you cross the river.

The fact that you’ve made the raft out of things on this side of the river means basically that you’re taking the aggregates—form, feeling, perceptions, thought constructs, and consciousness—and turning them into the path.

Like we’re doing when we concentrate: You’re focused on the breath, which is an aspect of form. You’re trying to develop a feeling of pleasure. As you do that, you hold in mind a picture of what the breath does in the body. That’s perception. You ask yourself if the breath is comfortable or not, and if it’s not comfortable, what can be done to improve it? If it is comfortable, what can be done to maintain it? That’s the aggregate of fabrication. And then there’s consciousness, which is aware of all these things.

So you’re taking these aggregates and you’re turning them into the path. You’re taking the twigs and leaves and branches on this side and you make them into a raft. Then you make whatever effort is needed to get across. When you’ve gotten to the other side, that’s when you can let the raft go.

At that point, as the Buddha said, you don’t let it go out of hatred. You don’t let it go out of disgust. You let it go with a sense of appreciation: “This raft has been very useful to me, but I don’t need it anymore.” So, you pull it up on the shore and you go on your way.

You take your many senses of self and you try to train them. After all, what are they? Strategies. As the Buddha said, everything comes from desire. Everything is rooted in desire. You’ve developed your sense of self and your sense of what is not self, based on the different desires you’ve decided to follow, using “self” and “not-self” as strategies for attaining what you want.

Both “self” and “not-self” are strategies. Each desire will have a different sense of self and a different sense of not-self. The question is whether you use your sense of self and your sense of not-self wisely.

It is possible to use not-self unwisely, you know. When people ask if you’re responsible for something you did, and you say, “Well, there’s no me here,” that’s not a skillful use of not-self.

A skillful use of not-self is when you realize: “There are certain things I used to identify with and they’re not worth identifying with. They lead to long-term suffering and stress.”

You use both self and not-self as strategies to get to happiness. When you get to the ultimate happiness, you don’t need either of them. That’s when you can safely put them both aside.

So even though there are times in the practice when you don’t seem to have any sense of self, you realize there are also times when you come back and have a very strong sense of self. That’s the self that has to be trained in these proper ego functions: Heedfulness. Compassion. Restraint. Developing the pleasures of the path and the pleasures of concentration. Having a sense of humor. A sense of healthy shame.

When you’ve trained all your different selves to have these qualities, then when the time comes to let them go, you let them go as friends. When you let go in that way, then it’s skillful, because you’ve used them for their best use. You appreciate them and now you can put them aside.