Daily Buddhist Wisdom
 

Imagine a person who suddenly wakes up in the hospital after an automobile accident to find that she is suffering from total amnesia. Outwardly, everything is intact: She has the same face and form, her senses and her mind are there, but she doesn?t have any idea or any trace of a memory of who she really is.

In exactly the same way, we cannot remember our true identity, our original nature. Frantically, and in real dread, we cast around and improvise another identity, one we clutch with all the desperation of someone falling continuously into an abyss. This false and ignorantly assumed identity is ?ego.?

-Sogyal Rinproch

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Why would we have a "true identity"?

Nice!

Seriously... I would love it if you posted a daily buddhist thread... :glugglug

What do you expect?

We're falling continuously into an abyss! :helpme


http://www.smilebug.com/picszzz/chickendance.gif

Wondering the same

Freud would argue that having an Ego is not a vice, but rather that it is an inherant part of being human!

It would be awsome if someone would post something like this everyday! :thumbsup

Drawing back from my philosophy 101 course, I believe it was Nietzsche who said that all living beings have a natural tendancy to gravitate toward the unattainable state of perfection.

What stops us from making progress toward this state is when we restrain our natural animal instincts. In order for us to restrain ourselves, we have to develop ideas, or concepts, about the real-world.

Eventually, we develop so many concepts that it skews our perception of reality. We act according to how we percieve our world. This will end up influencing how we think of ourselves which effects our identity!

And so, we walk around with a skewed, or phoney identity! To rid ourselves of this phoney identity, we have to turn back to our animal instincts!

Deep thoughts, by Joshua Ungar :winkwink:

Regards,

Joshua Ungar
myVirtualCard
www.myVirtualCard.com

I used to meditate twice a day, every day. At one point after meditating for years, I had a very odd out of body experience during a meditation. A Buddhist friend of mine told me it was one of the 3 (or was it 5?) stages of death. It was very cool, I'd do it again in a heartbeat, but I can not will it to happen.