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Re:When Buddhism Goes Bad – How My Mindfulness Practice Led ... by mettamage on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @12:32PM (#34883961)
Favorited, I'm on a quest to be egoless as I'm finding the ego to be an issue in my day to day. It's hard to pinpoint the ego, but you did so wonderfully :)
Re:When Buddhism Goes Bad – How My Mindfulness Practice Led ... by rattlesnakedave on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @02:40PM (#34885912)
you need some ego. otherwise you won't know where to point your fork to eat.
Re:When Buddhism Goes Bad – How My Mindfulness Practice Led ... by nick__m on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @03:22PM (#34886542)
you reminded me of some John lenon comment on ego death :

   I got the message that I should destroy my ego and I did, you know. I was reading that stupid book of Leary’s; we were going through a whole game that everybody went through, and I destroyed myself. I was slowly putting myself together round about Maharishi time. Bit by bit over a two-year period, I had destroyed me ego.

   I didn’t believe I could do anything and let people make me, and let them all just do what they wanted. I just was nothing. I was shit. Then Derek tripped me out at his house after he got back from L.A. He sort of said “You’re all right,” and pointed out which songs I had written. “You wrote this,” and “You said this” and “You are intelligent, don’t be frightened.”
-- https://www.johnlennon.com/music/interviews/rolling-stone-in...
Re:When Buddhism Goes Bad – How My Mindfulness Practice Led ... by lend000 on Tuesday February 21, 2023 @08:47PM (#34890461)
I haven't quite achieved an ego death yet through meditation, but reading through a fair amount of psychedelic journeys suggests that eliminating the ego, while perhaps useful and enlightening in moderation, sort of defeats the point of living a life in this world. If the world really does exist simply to provide experiential distraction from the existential dread of being an absolute consciousness in the void (which is a big if), why be in such a rush to get back into that base state? Go experience all the wonders of the world, take risks, spread positivity.
Re:When Buddhism Goes Bad – How My Mindfulness Practice Led ... by zozbot234 on Wednesday February 22, 2023 @05:24AM (#34893804)
No-self is not really about eliminating the ego, it's about eliminating the craving for an ego. These two are not the same; in fact, the latter seems to be harder. It's why so many meditators anecdotally get stuck in their "Dark Night". I don't know what psychedelic "ego death" does exactly, but I'm skeptical that it addresses craving.
Re:When Buddhism Goes Bad – How My Mindfulness Practice Led ... by mettamage on Friday February 24, 2023 @09:34PM (#34933239)
There might be some overlap as psilocybin can be used to treat addiction. There’s a recent John Oliver episode on it