Zen - Bhagavad Gita

Ego is really a conceptual structure of some sort, and if your mind is thinking about the same thing all the time, what happened to the ego? Because the ego is really based on part of those seventeen trillion mind moments being filled with redefining the game - over and over again. "Well, really I'm Ram Dass, really I'm Ram Dass and I'm doing this and I'm somebody who gets hungry and I'm . . . and there's the world out there and I'm here. . . I'm just. . !' We're using all of our senses and our associative stuff to keep the game together - to keep our conceptual framework of the universe in order. The minute you bring your mind in to one point, what in effect you're doing is over-riding the existing program in the computer. And when you do that, there is an incredible amount, of course, of the computer trying to re-assert itself, so that the thoughts get more insistent, more demanding - suddenly you've got to go to the bathroom in the worst way, even though you just went ten minutes ago. There is a book called the Bhagavad Gita in India which is a book that is concerned with a battle - supposedly a battle out in the battlefield. But one way of understanding that book is it's this inner battle about who's going to run the game. Are your thoughts going to be your master or are you going to be master of your thoughts? I would like to have programs available, one of which is the Ram Dass Program, but I would like not to have it run my life. Because it turns out that isn't who I am. That's who I thought I was.

Vivekananda talks about a coach going down the road with a coachman and the man inside the coach. For years, the man inside has just been sitting in there, or the woman inside has been sitting there, and the coachman has been running the coach. The coachman has gotten the feeling that the coachman owns the coach and is making all the decisions. Finally the person inside taps on the glass and says, "Say, would you pull over here?" Imagine what happens in the coachman's mind. He never even knew there was anybody back there in the first place, and he is under the impression it's his coach and his horses and he's running the show. And then suddenly this person says, "Would you pull over, here's. . ." "Who the hell do you think you are? It's my coach!" "What do you mean it's your coach?" "Ever since I can remember, ever since I can remember," says the coachman, "I've been running this coach." "Well, I understand that, but now - you know you were going in the right direction - now it's time for a change, and would you mind pulling over?" What do you imagine happens then? I mean the coachman doesn't just say, "Oh, Master, I'm sorry, I give up," and pull over. Then starts the struggle which is outlined in the Bhagavad Gita. The struggle of these different forces inside which could be characterized - although it's treading on very thin ice because of the way in which we use words like this - but it could be talked about as the ego, or the conceptual framework of separate identity versus consciousness. I know that some of you use the term ego in different ways.

- RAM DASS, THE ONLY DANCE THERE IS