Mind Ego and Suffering

Without knowing the nature of our mind, we remain ignorant to the cause of suffering as well as the cultivation of health and wellbeing.

Western psychology is in its infancy regarding the nature of the mind, let alone understanding consciousness. While much has been focused on the ego, superego and Id through the work of Freud, most western psychology is in fact less than 120 years old, compared to the Eastern understandings of the nature of mind, ego, consciousness and suffering which extend to thousands of years.

One of the casualties of the twentieth century introduction of Eastern contemplative traditions to the West has been the misappropriation of Freudian terminology by scholars and practitioners of these Eastern traditions.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the confused use of the concepts "ego" and "egolessness" by psychologists of the meditative experience

Familiarity with the current ego psychological-object relations view of the ego reveals that meditation can be seen as operating in different ways on many distinctive facets of the ego, promoting change and development within the ego, rather than beyond it.

This view requires that the ego be understood as a complex and sophisticated matrix of structures, functions and representations, rather than as a single entity that could be readily abandoned. It recognizes the indispensability of the ego while at the same time revealing how meditation practice can uniquely modify it, producing an ego no longer obsessed with its own solidity.