Mark Epstein: Advice Not Given [Summary]

Mark Epstein: Advice Not Given [Summary]

Your self-esteem doesn’t need to increase. Your ego needs to change.

Your ego helps you self-regulate, plan large projects and deal with conflicts. While this shared “affliction” seemingly wants to take care of you, ego pushes to gain more of your focus and energy. The West is undergoing a self-esteem craze, but greater self-esteem won’t reduce your suffering. The ego can learn and change. You can talk your ego away from its atavistic purpose in the world and focus it internally. Teaching your ego to “let go” leaves you freer. Using the Buddhist Eightfold Path – potentially alongside Western therapy – can help repair the damage the ego causes. If you want to heal, you must see yourself realistically. When you understand what you are afraid of and what you want, you can free yourself.

Right Motivation calls for living in plain sight and acting with conscious awareness.

The goal of Right Motivation is to reveal yourself instead of hiding, acting consciously instead of being reactive. Use meditation to let yourself open up, be honest and acknowledge uncomfortable emotions. Don’t make it a controlled, change-restricting environment.

Apply Right Speech to yourself and others.

Traditionally, Right Speech embodies how you talk with others. It condemns telling lies, talking about people when they aren’t present, inflating yourself and making unkind retorts. Buddhism teaches that such actions create mental disharmony. You may often repeat certain thoughts and stories that you hold in your mind, but they usually aren’t true. Buddhism and psychotherapy concentrate on these stories but, traditionally, Buddhism mentions only external speech. Buddhism enjoins you to pay heed to the time between a thought and a statement and to pause if the statement will be unkind or hurtful. In your mind, your thoughts may seem to appear from a void without prompting. People often define themselves by their thoughts. Use Right Speech as a guide to observe your thoughts without accepting them as fact.

When describing the relief of “getting over yourself,” Suzuki Roshi, founder of the San Francisco Zen Center, equated it to a peaceful ocean. If you try to remove the waves – the ego – you won’t succeed. Instead, realize that the waves are part of the ocean, and don’t worry about how they change constantly. This shift in perspective can change how you feel about yourself. The Buddha’s strategy of dispassionate observation offers a way for people to free themselves from their egos and to get to know themselves more authentically.