Matthieu Ricard "Happiness: A Guide to "

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ЦЕНЫ НА РАБОТЫ ДЕМПИНГОВЫЕ (НИЖЕ РЫНОЧНЫХ)
РАССМОТРЮ ВАШИ ВАРИАНТЫ ПО СТОИМОСТИ РАБОТЫ
ЕСЛИ РАБОТА ЗАИНТЕРЕСОВАЛА, ПИШИТЕ В ЛИЧКУ, ДАВ ССЫЛКУ НА НЕЁ.


THE VEILS OF THE EGO
First we conceive the "I" and grasp onto it.
Then we conceive the "mine" and cling to the material world.
Like water trapped on a waterwheel, we spin in circles, powerless.
I praise the compassion that embraces all beings.
CHANDRAKIRTI

Mental confusion is a veil that prevents us fr om seeing reality clearly and clouds our understanding of the true nature of things. Practically speaking, it is also the inability to identify the behavior that would allow us to find happiness and avoid suffering. When we look outward, we solidify the world by projecting onto it attributes that are in no way inherent to it. Looking inward, we freeze the flow of consciousness when we conceive of an "1" enthroned between a past that no longer exists and a future that does not yet exist. We take it for granted that we see things as they are and rarely question that opinion. We spontaneously assign intrinsic qualities to things and people, thinking "this is beautiful, that is ugly," without realizing that our mind superimposes these attributes upon what we perceive. We divide the entire world between "desirable" and "undesirable," we ascribe permanence to ephemera and see independent entities in what is actually a network of ceaselessly changing relations. We tend to isolate particular aspects of events, situations, and people, and to focus entirely upon these particularities. This is how we end up labeling others as "enemies," "good," "evil," et cetera, and clinging strongly to those attributions. However, if we consider reality carefully, itscomplexity becomes obvious. .......

THE CRYSTALLIZATION OF THE EGO
Among the many aspects of our confusion, the most radically disruptive is the insistence on the concept of a personal identity: the ego. Buddhism distinguishes between an innate, instinctive "I" - when we think, for instance, "I'm awake" or "I'm cold" - and a conceptual "self" shaped by the force of habit. We attribute various qualities to it and posit it as the core of our being, autonomous and enduring.
At every moment between birth and death, the body undergoes ceaseless transformations and the mind becomes the theater of countless emotional and conceptual experiences. And yet we obstinately assign qualities of permanence, uniqueness, and autonomy to the self. Furthermore, as we begin to feel that this self is highly vulnerable and must be protected and satisfied, aversion and attraction soon come into play – aversion for anything that threatens the self, attraction to all that pleases it, comforts it, boosts its confidence, or puts it at ease. These two basic feelings, attraction and repulsion, are the fonts of a whole sea of conflicting emotions................

WHAT TO Do WITH THE EGO?
Unlike Buddhism, very few psychological treatments address the problem of how to reduce the feeling of self-centeredness – a reduction that, for the wise man, extends all the way to eradicating the ego. This is certainly a new, even subversive idea in the West, which holds the self to be the fundamental building block of the personality. Surely, if I eliminate my ego I will cease to exist as a person. How can you have an individual without an I, an ego? Isn't such a concept psychically dangerous? Isn't there a risk of sinking into some kind of schizophrenia? Isn't a weak or nonexistent ego the clinical sign of a potentially forceful pathology? Don't you need a fully developed personality before you can renounce the ego? These are the kinds of defensive reactions most Westerners have to such unfamiliar notions. The idea that one needs a robust ego comes from the fact that some people who suffer from mental problems are said to have a fragmented, fragile, or deficient sense of self...............

THE DECEPTIVE EGO
In our day-to-day lives, we experience the self through its vulnerability. A simple smile gives it instant pleasure and a scowl achieves the contrary. The self is always "there," ready to be wounded or gratified. Rather than seeing it as multiple and elusive, we make it a unitary, central, and permanent bastion. But let's consider what it is we suppose contributes to our identity. Our body? An assemblage of bones and flesh. Our consciousness? A continuous stream of instants. Our history? The memory of what is no more. Our name? We attach all sorts of concepts to it - our heritage, our reputation, and our social status - but ultimately it's nothing more than a grouping of letters. When we see the word JOHN, our spirits leap, we think, "That's me!" But we only need to separate the letters, J-O-H-N, to lose all interest. The idea of "our" name is just a mental fabrication.
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THE DECONSTRUCTION OF THE SELF
To get a better handle on this, let's resume our analysis 10 greater detail. The concept of personal identity has three aspects: the "I," the "person," and the "self." These three aspects are not fundamentally different from one another, but reflect the different ways we cling to our perception of personal identity.
The "I" lives in the present; it is the "I" that thinks "I'm hungry" or "I exist." It is the locus of consciousness, thoughts, judgment, and will. It is the experience of our current state.........

IN SEARCH OF THE LOST SELF
Wh ere then is the self? It cannot be exclusively in my body, because when I say "I am proud," it is my consciousness that is proud, not my body. So is it exclusively in my consciousness? That is far from certain. When I say: "Someone pushed me," was it my consciousness being pushed? Of course not. The self obviously cannot be outside the body and the consciousness. If it were an autonomous entity independent of one and the other, it could not be of their essence. Is it simply, as we explained above, the sum of their parts, their structure and their continuity? Is the concept of the self simply associated with the body and the consciousness in their entirety? You may notice that we have begun to move away from the notion of the self as owner or essence, and toward a more abstract notion, a concept. The only way out of this dilemma is to consider the self as a mental or verbal designation linked to a dynamic process, to a series of changing relations that incorporate the perception of the outer world, sensations, mental images, emotions, and concepts. The self is merely an idea.

THE FRAGILE FACES OF IDENTITY
The notion of the "person" includes the image we keep of ourselves. The idea of our identity, our status in life, is deeply rooted in our mind and continuously influences our relations with others. The least word that threatens our image of ourselves is unbearable, although we have no trouble with the same qualifier applied to someone else in different circumstances. If you shout insults or flattery at a cliff and the words are echoed back to you, you remain unaffected. But if someone else shouts the very same insults at you, you feel deeply upset. If we have a strong image of ourselves, we will constantly be trying to assure ourselves that it is recognized and accepted. Nothing is more painful than to see it opened up to doubt.
THROUGH THE INVISIBLE WALL
How can I expect this understanding of the illusory nature of the ego to change my relationships with my family and the world around me? Wouldn't such a U-turn be unsettling? Experience shows that it will do you nothing but good. Indeed when the ego is predominant, the mind is like a bird constantly slamming into a glass wall - belief in the ego - that shrinks our world and encloses it within narrow ........