Hi Peter, I dropped a comment on LinkedIn where you pointed to this post earlier but wanted to add it here in context.
Andrew Krawchyk makes the simple point elegantly — if you talk about your ego, you have not shed it. And even more — not just talk about it, but share it to the world. The ego is the image of our selves that we project, what we want others to see. Our true selves are transparent, we allow people to see through us, not look at the filtered reflection we present.
Recall, the buddah does not tell us his journey, he doesn’t make it about him. he teaches us what he learned on his journey. The “way” is a framework, a guide, but our journeys are our own. The wheel is simple and elegant, which is why it diverged into so many other traditions and infused others.
Your recent journey — a year where you went to TED, you rode a motorcycle a thousand miles, you attended lush retreats — is one of huge privilege afforded by wealth. It does not speak to the suffering of attachment, because while you sold your business, you detached from nothing. Siddartha did not sell his kingdom and retire on the profits to travel a path to find himself on a narcissistic journey. He left it all behind and walked away barefoot without a penny in his pocket never to return. Of course you earned your money through your hard work, but as people often put it now, it is a humble brag. The suffering of fear for basic needs like housing or food is not known to one who has money to put gas in an expensive motorcycle or knows there’s a bank roll waiting for them back home. Most people lose their ego by having it crushed going through the suffering that you have financially escaped, people profit from their suffering. Could you have found your enlightenment without a motorcycle and walking barefoot as all the impoverished practitioners do who live along the path you walked?
When not raised into buddhism, people usually start their path when things fall apart. Their homes are destroyed, their countries conquered, their marriages crumble, they lose their employment, their loved ones die. In losing everything, or giving it all up, we realize we truly have nothing but our contentment. And with that inner peace, we stop suffering. Despite having nothing, we find we are happy for wanting nothing.
Teachers like Pema Chodren and Thich Nhat Hanh show us that nothingness and emptiness is a place within ourselves. You were in Vietnam, and seem to have picked up a lot of Mahayana. You may find some value in their writing.
Your ego didn’t die. What you did was reinvent your ego. That’s not a bad thing. In some ways, buddhism is a very self-centered practice. It is about embracing the self to find contentment — it is about self love first, a healthy ego. When we are comfortable with our nothingness, we want for nothing. Then when we are no longer harming ourselves, can we turn to look a the causes of suffering in the world and strive to not be a cause of it. In our mindfulness, we find that our minds are all we have or need.
Sorry if this is a buzzkill, truly. But among the many praises you are receiving for broadcasting this, feeding your new ego, and a life and career spent interacting with others or building reputations for yourself, your company or your clients, a burr in the saddle is only a thought to ponder about how my ego needs people to tell me my list of books and cool trips I took made me more awesomer when I lost my identity — which is what really died.
In the yin and the yang, there is both id and ego. Coming from a town like DC where the first question people ask in establishing your identity is “what do you do” or “where do you work, I believe it is hard not to get confused about ego and identity. I know mine were both crushed when tragedy hit me. But as you take your journey that 99 percent can’t afford, and you walk through a country scarred by war and poverty and disease — think of how they are happy in spite of it all. Could you do the same?
