Why Your Self-Image Might Be Wrong: Ego, Buddhism, and Freud | Mark Epstein
You first develop your ego when you are two or three years old. It creeps into existence the moment you realize that you are not empty—you are a self, and ...
==========
I think the average person who knows maybe a little bit about psychology or a little bit about Buddhism would think that the Buddhist emphasis or the Buddhist conversation about the ego is all about getting rid of the ego completely. There’s this notion in Buddhist psychology of “egolessness” or “no self”, and most people misinterpret that—as Freud actually did—most people misinterpret it to think that Buddhism is saying we don’t need the ego at all or we don’t need the self at all, like get rid of it and then we’re one with everything and that’s it. And I think that’s wrong. Obviously we need our egos. A good friend of mine Robert Thurman who is a Professor of Buddhism at Columbia, a Professor of Religion at Columbia, he had a Mongolian teacher in the 1960s who us...
==========
I think the average person who knows maybe a little bit about psychology or a little bit about Buddhism would think that the Buddhist emphasis or the Buddhist conversation about the ego is all about getting rid of the ego completely. There’s this notion in Buddhist psychology of “egolessness” or “no self”, and most people misinterpret that—as Freud actually did—most people misinterpret it to think that Buddhism is saying we don’t need the ego at all or we don’t need the self at all, like get rid of it and then we’re one with everything and that’s it. And I think that’s wrong. Obviously we need our egos. A good friend of mine Robert Thurman who is a Professor of Buddhism at Columbia, a Professor of Religion at Columbia, he had a Mongolian teacher in the 1960s who us...
