The Ego and Context

August 05, 2006 | 05:01 PM
The Ego and Context
Can I see myself out of any context ? Can I just exist ? without contextualizing my existence ? I have been battling this question over the last few days and would welcome comments.

I am a father. A film maker. A man. A human being. I am one person for one moment and another the next. I am good and bad in the same moment, indeed good and bad at the same time in the same context ! But every thing that I am, is contextualized by something else. Every thought I have is contextualized by something else. Even a thought cannot exist on it's own.


Try it. Think of yourself and then try and remove all context. Not possible is it ? You always think of yourself in relationship to something else. Even when u say "I love", which are probably the two most powerful words in the universe, there is a context who or what you love, however enormous your love may be.

So when those that have immense Wisdom say "I am". Just those two words "I am", surely they are talking about an existence without context ? Because if Buddha talked about 'formlesness" and 'Shunyata', surely He was talking about an existence without contextualizing that existence. How can infinity have a context ? How could timelesness have a context ? How could shunyata have a context ? Non Infinity ? Non Shunyata ? Non timelesness ? Doesn't make sense.

How weak the Ego is then, how weak our induviduality is then, when we exist only in the imagined context of something else. And we live our whole lives based on imagined contexts ?

How do we get to a life without context ? Is that what consciousness means ?

shekhar

So I realize how weak the Ego is. It has absolutely no value without Context.