Self and ego

Before leaving the topic of love, I would also like to apply the point about the division of love to the question of self-love. One of the ways that the division of love can be unhelpfully applied is by seeing greed as �selfish� and metta as �unselfish�. The unhelpful division of love in the Buddhist tradition also gets closely interlocked with traditional unhelpful ways of thinking about the self in Western thought. This area is fraught by confusion of terminology, with different commentators using the terms �self�, �ego� and �individual� differently. I am just going to stipulate the way in which I would like to use these terms.

In the way I would prefer to use the terms, �individual� refers to a single person inhabiting a single human body. �Self� refers to that individual body and mind as we think of it, so �self-love� means love of that individual body and mind I think of as my own. �Selfishness� refers to a narrow identification with my individual body and mind to the exclusion of others, and �selflessness� the opposite.

Where confusion rapidly sets in is if individual and self are not distinguished from what I prefer to call �ego�. Ego consists in a set of identifications or volitions, of greed and hatred. I might identify with my own success and my own possessions as an individual, but I might also identify with relatives, friends, country, religion, ideas etc. If I identify with my national football team, for example, and they lose, my ego is hurt, even though I as an individual have not been affected at all.

Where does love lie in this? If we follow the Middle Way, and try to think of love as something that exists in our experience, rather than as an abstract metaphysical quantity, love cannot be any kind of reversal or denial of the ego. For ego motivates all our feelings and actions to varying extents: we cannot simply turn off the ego. If we think we have done so we are likely to be deceiving ourselves, for our ego identifies with the new policy as well as the old, and has merely shifted its understanding of the interests of what it identifies with. Thus self-control, if I choose not to be angry or not to reach for another cream bun, is not a reversal of the ego, but just the ego thinking longer-term.

The Middle Way cannot justify thinking of love as a reversal of the ego, but on the other hand it also cannot justify the nihilistic approach of thinking that we are stuck with the ego as it is and can do nothing to improve our actions. Either of these two approaches would involve imposing a dogmatic metaphysical idea on our experience. So, love needs to be thought of not as a reversal of the ego, but as a loosening and extending of the ego�s identifications. If, for example, in the metta-bhavana meditation to cultivate loving-kindness, I start with a good friend, and then try to recognise the humanity that this friend has in common with my greatest enemy, I may start to extend the identification that I have with my friend to also cover the enemy. By loving my enemy, I am not giving anything up or squashing any other feelings, but merely extending feelings that already existed and allowing them to grow.

But now let�s turn back to the issues associated with self and other. The relationship between ego and self is entirely contingent. Many of us do identify strongly with ourselves as individuals, but this is not a foregone conclusion. Parents, for example, are likely to identify strongly with their children. Some people, particularly women, can fall into the habit of not identifying with themselves very much, but only with others. The cultivation of love involves loosening and extending whatever ego identifications we have to start with, and this might involve loving ourselves more than we did before, as well as extending our identification from people we already identify with (such as lovers or children) to others towards whom we were previously indifferent or hostile.

Love, therefore, has nothing to do with selfishness or selflessness. By using these terms we just create confusion and probably resentment. Is it �selfish� to go on solitary retreat? Yes, because one is concerned with oneself and is not relating to others. However, one may be using such a period of withdrawal from social contact to loosen and extend ego-identifications and develop love. Since �selfish� in normal English usage confuses the ideas of loving oneself and being narrowly egoistic, it is much better avoided altogether. The same goes for selflessness and self-sacrifice, which in practice can often be extremely egoistic. The suicide bomber is extremely selfless, but can hardly be described as loving.

All of this approach seems to me to be very much in the spirit of the metta-bhavana and of the ways that Buddhist practice works with the self and ego. Through centuries of practice, Buddhist tradition has developed spiritual and psychological technologies which can be extremely effective. As often, however, there is interference and confusion of this picture from a Buddhist tradition that is not entirely in harmony with it.

This confusion arises particularly from continuing ascetic influence, which I have already mentioned earlier in part b of this chapter. The mistake in asceticism, as discovered by the Buddha in reaching his Middle Way, lies in trying to overcome the self rather than the ego, and also often in seeing this as an opposition rather than a loosening and extension. All too easily the tradition of renunciation in Buddhism � for example renouncing the household life to become a monk, can become an attack on one�s life as it has been constructed so far rather than an attempt to loosen the boundaries of its identification. Monastic celibacy provides one example, which I will discuss further in chapter 10. It is difficult to see �going forth from home into homelessness� (the traditional formula for becoming a monk) as an act of love, when it wrenches away not only others but one�s own identification with them: though there may be occasions when some household lives are so negative or fail to engage with conditions so much that it becomes so.

It is striking, also, how much less successful the Buddhist tradition has been in outward expressions of charitable motivation than the Christian one, despite the deep confusion in the Christian tradition between love and selflessness. Of course, there are Buddhists doing extremely successful altruistic work, and �engaged Buddhism� is a growing movement. But why did Buddhism need to be �engaged�, and why was it not engaged already? Why, for that matter, was it not Buddhist lands that first developed modern medicine, the welfare state, and universal education? The answers to such big questions can only be offered in broad-brush terms, but here is one possible broad answer. It is not because Buddhists are �selfish� or engage in more individual practice, for this generally helps them to engage more in the conditions of love, not less. Instead, it is because their practice has been much too caught up in idealisations of love and emotions directed towards those idealisations, and not sufficiently on applying that love in practice by engaging with conditions.

Here is an example of this. A traditional Tibetan practitioner visualises the figure of Tara every day. With much practice he positively glows with love for all that he meets. On the other hand, a Christian missionary doctor does a little desultory prayer every morning, but actually spends most of his time and energy on running a clinic which improves the health of thousands of Africans. It is the Buddhist here who is more loving, but the Christian whose love is more effective. The Buddhist has a better understanding of the Middle Way, yet the Christian practises it more by addressing conditions more fully.

These figures are of course just representatives. There are vigorous practical Buddhists doing medical or social work and there are idealising contemplative Christians. Yet broadly I would argue that these two figures are more representative of their respective traditions than otherwise. What has gone wrong for the Buddhist is not selfishness, but a situation in which feelings of love have become an end in themselves, rather than being part of a wider project to address conditions. This may, in the end, be because what the Buddhist seeks is not to address conditions, but to achieve enlightenment, a condition which is understood primarily as a transformation of mental states rather than outward conditions.

If love is the loosening and extending of ego-identifications and is to be seen quantitatively rather than qualitatively, those identifications are concerned just as much with the physical conditions of the world and with society as with the self. The Christian and the Buddhist in this example are both working with conditions, and extending egoistic identifications in the process, but the Buddhist has limited the range of conditions addressed, and thus limited the impact of Buddhism on the world.

In conclusion to this chapter on love, then, I have argued that Buddhism has some important insights into the practical cultivation of love, and that this continues to occur amongst Buddhists. However, this cultivation of love is unnecessarily constrained by several interrelated factors: the idealisation of love in forms remote from common experience, the continuing influence of asceticism in despite of the Middle Way, the division in Buddhist thinking between universal and worldly love, and the tendency (created by the other factors) to think of love as in opposition to the self. It is the reform of these ways of thinking about love that could help remove some of the constraints on compassion in Buddhism, perhaps including those which limit its contribution to the relief of suffering in the world when compared to other major religions.

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