Merle,<br/><br/>The only thing the Freudian concept of 'ego' shares with the
Buddhist concept of the same is the name. They're quite different concepts.
Check this out from www.luminousbuddha.com:<br/><br/>"The Latin term ego was
first used in a translation of Freud’s work to refer to his idea of the “I” or
the reality principle within the dynamic forces of the psyche. He suggests the
functions of the “I” include reasoning, a sense of self-capacity and the
mediator between the polarized demands of instinctual drives and societal
expectations. While he considered the “I” a mechanism of the self, he did not
use the term ego. Nevertheless the word ego entered the mainstream in
professional conversations of the analytic understanding of the human being as
it began with Freud’s thought.<br/><br/>As psychology became popularized the
word ego entered the common vernacular to describe attitudes and behaviors
considered selfish or inflated. The
slang use of ego is generally a derogatory term for behaviors considered out
of the range of social acceptance. Slang borrows from the inflated side of
the psychodynamic description of the unhealthy manifestations of ego yet lacks
a deeper understanding of its causes. <br/><br/>In the 1970’s Chogyam Trungpa
Rinpoche, a Tibetan lama, began utilizing the term ego to describe a neurotic
process based on the ignorance of our actual situation (Trungpa, 1978)
resulting in a solidified sense of self that is separate and self-referential
and as such is the cause of suffering. He saw the projections of the ego as an
incorrect understanding of the interdependent nature of reality and the primary
obstruction to clear seeing and compassion. He borrowed aspects of the term
from both psychology and modern vernacular usage. <br/><br/>Buddhists around
the world have embraced this usage of the term ego and use it regularly to
describe the common illusion of a
static separate self that emphasizes it’s self-importance in relation to the
world. This Buddhist definition can now be understood as a unique
understanding of the word ego as well. The field of transpersonal psychology
has borrowed from the Buddhist usage of the term ego in the psychological and
spiritual mapping of human development.<br/><br/>The confusion that has arisen
from the different usages of the term ego is significant to those in the field
of psychology as well as Buddhist practitioners who have an incomplete
understanding of the word in its several contexts. The general public would
also benefit from a further understanding of the factors relating to the
formation of an aggrandized sense of self to which the slang usage of ego
refers."<br/><br/><br/>Sent from Yahoo! Mail for iPad
