I was reading this passage from a book I can't unfortunately recall at this time, but it was saying that in many East Asian cultures, particularly those based on Buddhist or Taoist beliefs, "desire, craving, lust, and ambition are viewed as the source of suffering." Thus, the idea is that we should "seek to emancipate the self from egoism" (de Silva, 1993; Sinha & Sinha, 1997). From this perspective, the individual self is seen as illusory or unreal; the ideal state requires the "transcendence of self-hood and complete identification with the forces of the cosmos" (Ho, 1995; Inada, 1997).
So break free from your ego!
Emancipate yourself from egoistic slavery!!!
3 comments:
wouldn't that also "emancipate" a person from love, caring and happiness?
the defamation of egoism is a tool for societal control that began with organized religion and runs through the many strains of modern day Marxism... (see Atlas Shrugged for a more compelling argument). protesting against the fallout from hyper-consumerist capitalism and the culture of narcissism doesn't necessarily require the abdication of the ego, although explaining why it doesn't might be confusing for the young people.
i don't think emancipating oneself from egoistic slavery necessarily involves precluding oneself from experiencing love, caring, and happiness because true love, true caring, and true happiness arguably involve altruistic motivations directed toward causes greater than oneself!
that being said, i partially agree with you in the sense that the defamation of egoism can potentially leave a person vulnerable to being exploited by a tyrannical state.
finally, i also agree with you that one does not have to get rid of the ego to protest against the caustic effects of modern day consumer culture and unrestrained individualism; however it's definitely part of it!
love is a slippery one, but how can a person possibly be happy without possessing a sense of self? doesn't happiness necessarily imply a satisfaction with being? otherwise, how could you even know if you were happy?
perhaps this raises the related issue of whether or not someone needs to identify a state of happiness as such in order to fully experience it. (can a person be unconsciously happy?)
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