Ego is the Most Efficient Fuel for Enlightenment

 

Student: How do you step out of ego?

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche: I suppose, you could say, by developing a friendly relationship with ego . . .

Student: Would you give an example of being friendly to your ego?

Trungpa Rinpoche: It is a kind of communication and understanding of the mechanism of ego and not trying to suppress it or condemn it, but using your ego as a stepping stone, as a ladder . . . In fact, the very idea of enlightenment exists because of ego – because there is a contrast.  Without ego there wouldn’t be the very notion of enlightenment at all . . .

Student: When I get rid of my ego, will that make a difference?

Trungpa Rinpoche: You don’t get rid of your ego at all.

Student: But if I don’t get rid of my ego I can’t be enlightened, is that right?

Trungpa Rinpoche: It’s not as simple as that.  Without ego you cannot attain enlightenment, so you have to make friends with ego . . . Generally, ego is not aware of itself.  But in this case you begin to be aware of ego as it is: you don’t try to destroy it, or to exorcise it, but you see it as a step.  Each crisis of ego is a step toward understanding, to the awake state.  In other words, there are two aspects: ego purely continuing on its own, as it would like to play its game; and ego being seen in its true nature, in which case the game of ego becomes ironical.  At the same time, you don’t try to reject it.  The game in itself becomes a step, a path.

Student: What do you do?  You want to get rid of your ego, but you don’t reject it.  I don’t understand.

Trungpa Rinpoche: You don’t want to get rid of ego.  That’s the whole point.  You don’t try to get rid of ego at all – but you don’t try to maintain ego either . . . In other words, the ego is the ideal fuel, the fuel that is exciting to burn.  Consuming the ego as fuel, that would make a nice fire.  If you want to make a good fire, one that is dry and puts out a lot of heat, and doesn’t leave a lot of cinders, from the point of view of non-ego, ego is the best fuel that could be found in the whole universe.  Discovering this delightful fuel, this highly efficient fuel, is based on looking into the mirror of your mind.  That is what watches the ego burning.

Photo: Sunrise at West Thumb Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, WY, September 4, 2011