Hi Pudgala2,
According to the Diamond Sutra, ego is defined as the "notion of self".
Sentient beings include all living beings with or without thoughts,
without or without form.
The article you quoted seems to be an incomplete personal realization
based on modern day terms. It is valuable, yet may not be complete.
This being said, however...
Even Diamond Sutra asks us to be detached from words, or more properly
quoted, be detached from the "notion of dharma".
This is the only way to liberate our heart, or as others may call it our
spirit. Such that we could witness the truth instead of studying logic.
_/\_
jm
On 6/18/2012 12:56 PM, pudgala2 wrote:
Twenty-five hundred years ago Siddhartha Gautama made the astonishing
discovery
that the ego is a "virtual reality" conditioned in the brain by
unconsciously acquired
beliefs, attitudes, opinions, moods, etc.—collectively known as
/sentient beings/.
Gautama penetrated and released these empty emotional cofactors of his own
conditioned personality and realized Enlightenment—the end of mental
anguish.
Buddha: /I teach one thing and one thing only—the end of
/[egotistical] /suffering./
/Sentient being/ is the most misunderstood and misused concept in
Buddhism. It must
be thoroughly penetrated and understood or you will completely miss
the point of the
BuddhaDharma and the ending of mental anguish by the *release of all*
/sentient beings/.
/Sentient beings/ are mental entities such as perceptions, beliefs,
opinions, attitudes,
desires, moods, values, prejudices, convictions, assumptions,
preconceptions, biases,
habit patterns, dispositions, sentiments, judgments, addictions,
impulses, compulsions,
compunctions, obsessions, scruples, delusions, views, concepts,
thoughts, ideas, etc.,
that are *emotionally identified with and encapsulated in an ego*.
They are mentally
felt to be valid and real to the ego. "I am what I feel/experience" is
the cry of the ego—
the artificial sense of self construction.
The ego is a psychosomatic accretion unwittingly conditioned into the
brain by the body
growing up the way it did—a /fait accompli/. The limitations of this
crude creation generates
ever increasing suffering in the bewildered mind.
Most minds, via their ingrown egos, get distracted and bogged down in
traditions,
families, self complacency, careers, causes, religions, mental
illnesses, drugs, and other
acquired addictions, delusions, and illusions. A self selected few
come upon the /Truth
of Suffering/ and enter the path/process of the BuddhaDharma seeking
an end to their
egotistical suffering.
Suffering is an alarm telling mind it is time to wake up, pay
attention, and return to
*Original Mind* by deconstructing the *Original Sin of Egotistical
Identification*.
