QUESTION
Venerable Robina,
I hope you remain well.
Today’s question is about ego. I have had a lifelong sense that it was my obligation to be of benefit to others. I do not believe I can remember a time when I did not feel this obligation and I willingly accepted this responsibility as it feels very good to help people.
During recent meditation sessions, I had the realization that perhaps my actions to help others have been driven by my ego’s desire to be seen, to be approved of.
This thought has weighed on me for several weeks now. How should I deal with the fact that my ingrained thought pattern that attributed altruism to my sense of obligation to give back to my community may really be driven by ego and a desire to be seen/acknowledged?
With profound respect, gratitude, and humility,
M
ANSWER
Dear M,
Good to hear from you.
How wonderful you’ve always had the wish to benefit others! Amazing. Clearly you have a connection with the bodhisattva path. Take it on face value and keep having it, keep aspiring, keep growing your compassion and your bodhichitta.
And of course, until we’re highly advanced practitioners, there’ll always be some level or other of attachment to being seen as a good person, etc. etc. Just watch it, that’s all, be aware, and argue with it, stop buying into it.
When you study the Buddhist view of the mind, you get to understand that we have all the neurotic I-based thoughts, which cause us suffering; and then we have the virtues, the goodness. They’re two distinctly different sets of states of mind and it’s crucial to distinguish between them.
The trouble is they’re mixed together like a big soup and it’s only with much inner awareness that we can begin to see them, hear them, identify them.
The whole point of practice is 1. To lessen and eventually eliminate the ego-based states of mind – this is what Buddha has found to be possible – and 2. To develop to perfection the virtues, the goodness, the wisdom.
That’s it! That’s our job.
That’s why we need to learn to know our minds intimately. And that’s what you’re doing: this is why you’ve now noticed this attachment to be approved of.
Well done! Be so pleased you’ve identified it.
Keep moving, M!
Love,
Robina