Ego and Ego-Weakness: Some Buddhist and Western Approaches

Many western psychologists attribute many psychological problems to "ego weakness" and do a lot of work with their clients to help them strengthen this ego. Does this work go in the opposite direction of Buddhist practice? Are the two traditions completely at odds?

We might remember, here, some of the work of Chogyam Trungpa, who founded Naropa Institute (now Naropa University), a Buddhist oriented western educational institution, and whose teachings inspired Maitri Psychological Services, an approach to psychology and counseling grounded in Buddhist principles. At one point, Trungpa Rinpoche ran a live-in center for severely disturbed people. In that center, he emphasized simplicity and groundedness. He realized that some people need some settling before they can benefit from meditation, so he emphasized simple activities and grounded routines that would help people relate to their worlds more directly and sanely.

We can see from this kind of work that practitioners in both traditions recognize the need for some preliminary grounding. But what about ego-strengthening? An interesting term, and we don't find it used in the Buddhist tradition. However, we do find an important emphasis on "maitri," or "loving kindness," beginning with oneself. So, first one learns to extend kindness to oneself. This kind of practice helps to undermine the kinds of ego-weakness that western psychologists work with, for such weakness seems to consist of habit patterns in which a person constantly entertains aggressive thoughts about himself, thoughts in which one demands that one act, think, feel, react, or look differently than one already does. This kind of aggression undermines self-acceptance and thus in a sense weakens ego.

Buddhist practice, on the other hand, while not affirming ego (for if we do the practices, we begin to see through the process of ego, the process described by the five skandhas), emphasizes self-acceptance. One does not judge mental events; one simply observes them closely. If we do this, we begin to see ourselves more accurately, without cultural or conceptual overlays. We can cut through self-aggression simply by watching the thought-patterns through which that aggression arises. So though Buddhist practices do not aim at ego-strengthening, they do aim to undermine those processes that lead to the crippling self-assessment we often refer to as "ego weakness."