All 18 Uses of
ego
in
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
- An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an understanding of all Quality, in mechanical work as in other endeavors.†
Part 3 *egoless = without a sense of importancestandard suffix: The suffix "-less" in egoless means without and reverses the meaning of ego. This is the same pattern you see in words like harmless, fearless, and powerless.
- From what he's told me, they made a big ego thing out of the whole outdoor experience.†
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- It made the kids at camp much more enthusiastic and cooperative when they had ego goals to fulfill, I'm sure, but ultimately that kind of motivation is destructive.†
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- To the untrained eye ego-climbing and selfless climbing may appear identical.†
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- The ego-climber is like an instrument that's out of adjustment.†
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- When an ego-climber has an image of himself to protect he naturally lies to protect this image.†
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- Chris's spirits seem to be better now, but I'm afraid it's the ego thing again.†
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- But there's a slight ego gleam in his eyes as he asks this and the answer as a result comes out masked.†
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- It's the internal gumption trap of ego.†
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- Ego isn't entirely separate from value rigidity but one of the many causes of it.†
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- Your ego isolates you from the Quality reality.†
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- On any mechanical repair job ego comes in for rough treatment.†
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- You're always being fooled, you're always making mistakes, and a mechanic who has a big ego to defend is at a terrific disadvantage.†
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- It's just that the personality that it responds to is your real personality, the one that genuinely feels and reasons and acts, rather than any false, blown-up personality images your ego may conjure up.†
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- These false images are deflated so rapidly and completely you're bound to be very discouraged very soon if you've derived your gumption from ego rather than Quality.†
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- Anxiety, the next gumption trap, is sort of the opposite of ego.†
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- This is the opposite of anxiety and commonly goes with ego problems.†
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- The one everybody's in, this hyped-up, fuck-you, supermodern, ego style of life that thinks it owns this country.†
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Definitions:
-
(1)
(ego Freud's definition) psychoanalysis: the personality structure that mediates between the primitive, instinctual desires of the id and the moral conscience of the superego
more rarely, ego can refer to the conscious mind (since in Freud's theory, a person is partially aware of the mental activity of the ego, but not of the id and superego) -
(2)
(ego as in: bruised her ego) one's sense of self-esteem (sense of importance or ability)
-
(3)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Less commonly, ego can be a synonym for self.