Trapped by the ego

Here's an amazingly powerful observation by Larry Rosenberg in Breath by Breath:

I once knew a Canadian monk in Thailand. He seemed an impeccable monk from the outside, but he confessed to me that he was extremely unhappy. The problem was that all through the day he kept being bombarded by the thought, "I'm a monk. I'm a monk." Sometimes that self-image made him pleased with himself, when he thought he was living up to it. Other times he was tormented by the thought that he was failing it. Either way, it was a burden.

If a man were going to Wall Street every day in an expensive suit, Italian shoes, the finest overcoat money could buy, and he was just dressing that way because it was a convention, he didn't think it identified him at all, he would be freer than the monk, though the monk was wearing humble robes. Monastic life hadn't freed that man. It had become one more trap.

The final question of this practice, and of all spiritual life, is, Who are you? At the beginning you answer with conventional ideas about yourself. But as you look at them carefully, they don't stand up. They come and go, empty of an essential core. As they fade away, you come into contact with something that has tremendous depth and space, that is very alive. It's a vast extraordinary space that can be lived in and from, but it is unnameable. As soon as you name it - and the ego gets hold of it - it shrinks. You're just a small person once again.

You know, I want to pay tribute here to the role of faith in meditative practice. The kind of faith I'm talking about is a confidence in the reality of that unnameable something that has "tremendous depth and space." It is real. And it is so much better than an idealized self-image that can only contribute to either false pride or inner torment. Letting go of the image brings true liberation. Yes, have faith in this truth.