EGO & DEPRESSION :-

Ego :-

is a powerful attachment to the self and thus to the notion of “Mine” – my body, my name, my mind, my possession, my friends and so on – which leads either to desire to possess or to the feeling of repulsion for the “Other”. This erroneous sense of a real and independent self is of course based on ego- centricity, which persuades us that our own fate is of greater value than that of others.

The western world 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. But the genuine self-confidence is the natural quality of egolessness. Genuine confidence comes from an awareness of a basic quality of our mind and of our po- tential for transformation and flourishing, what Buddhism calls Buddha Nature, which is present in all of us.

The idea that a powerful ego is necessary to succeed in life undoubtedly stems from the confusion between attachment to our own image and the resolve to achieve our deepest aspirations. The fact is, the less influenced we are by the sense of our self’s importance, the easier it is to acquire lasting inner strength. The reason for this is simple: self importance is a target open to all sorts of mental projectiles – jealousy, fear, greed, repulsion – that perpetually destabilize it.

We are obsessed with our success, our failure, our hopes and our anxieties and thereby give happiness every opportunity to elude us. When the self ceases to be the most important thing in the world, we find it easier to focus our concern on others. The sight of their suffering bolsters our courage and resolve to work on their behalf, instead of crippling us with our own emotional distress.

Depression or unhappy thoughts: –

In depression all that is happening in the present is the anticipation of pain in the future and present no longer exists at all. The inability to manage our thoughts proves to be the principal cause of suffering. Learning to tone down the ceaseless racket of disturbing thoughts is a decisive stage on the road to inner peace.

When a painful emotion strikes us, the most urgent thinking is to look at it head-on and to identify the immediate thoughts that triggered it and are fanning it. Then by fixing our inner gaze on the emotion itself, we can gradually dissolve it like snow in sunshine. Furthermore, once the string of emotions has been sapped, the causes that triggered it will seem less tragic and we will have won ourselves the chance to break free from the vicious circle of nega- tive thoughts.

So we need to take a closer look at mind itself. The first things we notice are the currents of thought that are continuously flowing without our even being aware of them. The countless thoughts born of our sensations, our memories and our imagination are forever streaming through our mind. But also there is a quality of mind that is always present no matter what kind of thoughts we entertain. The quality is the primary consciousness underlying all thought. That faculty, that simple open presence, is what we may call “Pure consciousness”, because it exists even in the absence of mental constructs.

It is not easy to experience “Pure Consciousness”, but it is possible. When a thought arises, try to see where it came from; when it disappears, ask yourself where it went. In that brief moment when your mind is not encumbered by discursive thoughts, contemplate its nature. In that instant when past thoughts have fallen silent and future ones have yet to emerge, you can perceive a pure and luminous consciousness unadulterated by your conceptual constructs.