Ego

十個盤坐九個瘋

Ten sitting in the lotus posture, nine insane

滿則損，謙受益

The full can only deplete, humility is beneficial

Ego is a notion which is meant pop out at a time or another in one's training. It is often seen as a, if not bad, at least something that one should rein in or reduce. Among their many claims, martial arts are supposed to train one's ego.
However, if you have been training for sometime, you may find this one quite overrated. Needless to say that grading systems, uniforms, diplomas from organisations and their own claims, "traditional" being the most famous of them, competitions, teaching the masses, interviews, reference to a supreme guide or, even, star system..., have exactly the opposite effect desired if one is training "忘我自己", forgetting oneself... Writing a blog, like the present one, as well... 

Furthermore, before even trying to reduce his/her ego, one has to determine which kind of practice he is studying. Indeed, abnormal practices work reverse, they are all about increasing it, since they work on emotions. Becoming Berserk, as it is often intended, is about rage, and visualisations are about sensations, one of the main factors creating emotions. Both require a freer ego, not a reined one. So the following does not apply to the abnormal practices and is quite the opposite of what they require indeed.

Since ego also seems to have become this sort of very extended notion in the martial arts, a sort of common designation for a lot of supposed misconducts, maybe it is better to talk instead of the original practice, forgetting oneself, and its inadequacy as a hobby, and other related notions like trust, humility, modesty and control of one's emotions which can be more easily applied while living in society.

Forgetting oneself

This notion is a good example on how certain techniques require a very strict method that cannot be applied in society, and even less as a hobby.

It is also essential to first realise that a lot of basis, exercises and requirements were so obvious for the older generations that they just become something people would go through without even asking themselves why. A bit like nowadays people in the army salute without knowing it is done this way because it used either to be a sign to show that one was not holding a knife during the Roman Empire or because knights in armour in the middle-ages raised their visor with the right hand when they were meeting one another. Because the reasons behind them were forgotten, the more obsolete martial arts became, the more they were overlooked, if not totally set aside. To forget oneself could only be achieved through a monastic life, not otherwise.

Indeed, before forgetting oneself, you have to forget about all the rest, coworkers, relations, friends, even family if possible. In other words, to work on your ego, you first have to learn to start not caring at all about others, quite the opposite of compassion, which happens to be an emotion. In society, such an attitude would be qualified as psychopathy or sociopathy, without the criminal aspects of course. That is the first reason why one cannot enter this kind of practice without renouncing first the world, meaning social life of any sorts, for a certain time. Higher levels, according to the ancients, were even more suitable for those with no more family bounds, the harder ones to break. Hence, in the old days, and you hear about it less and less nowadays, it would be quite common for a good martial artist to seclude himself for a certain period of time, "閉門". Living in the most remote courtyard of the house (traditionally, Chinese houses were made of many courtyards surrounded by buildings), not allowing anyone to come in until the desired level was obtained, food being delivered at the door, was a common practice.

The second reason is that to forget about oneself, you have to deny sensations and emotions. In order to be able do this, you have to be in a suitable environment providing as less sensations and emotions as possible. The best one in this case is also seclusion. 

A parallel with dieting can be easily made. You can not make a serious diet while having a house full of food, inviting and being invited for dinners. If you want to give your diet a chance of success, you have to agree to refuse any social dinners and to have only the minimum food you need at your house. If you don't do so, you may show a very inflexible will and keep your diet, but you will also end up spoiling the food at your place and imposing on others your life choices, which is not the best social behaviour. Needless to say that it is not too clever to make hard things harder.

The parallel with diet can even go further. People go on a diet for many reasons, looking good, trying to change their eating habits or even to format them by erasing some of the bad ones, if not all. So, you can have three main kinds of diet:

The short-term which aim is always to loose as much as fast as possible.

The more long-term in which one will diet in order to change after his/her regular eating habits, the aim being not to gain back what just had been lost.

The fast with the aim of getting totally rid of some bad eating habits, like too much sugar intake.

All serve different purposes and have different effects on one's health, not too great when one is yo-yoing through short-term ones and maybe better in the two other options. Still, they all need, and especially the two last ones, a transitional phase before and after. Before in order to make the diet more efficient and the transition to it less painful. After to avoid health problems related to a too abrupt change from a very light nutrition, or even none, to a very rich one. Hence in the most extreme case, fasting for days, a very progressive return from no food to liquid nutrition and very progressively to more rich food is always essential. In other words, roughly, to fast efficiently for seven days, one would need almost the same amount of days of preparation, and to avoid any health problem the same amount of days for the return to a normal diet. Three weeks when one is living a very busy modern life is not such an easy thing to have.

Forgetting about oneself or finding inner peace works for the mind the same way diet does for the body. Hence, you have:

Small retreats, often in groups, of a couple of days, maybe a week, to break from an hectic lifestyle.

Longer ones, also most of the time in groups, with the aim of learning techniques in order to calm the mind and the spirit, which could be used when one is back to normal life.

A long retreat, alone, in order to drastically change one's relationship with sensations, emotions and feelings.

As for diet, they do need a preparation and coming out of phases. 

For the preparation, one has to understand that forgetting oneself is not cleaning himself from his problems. If one arrives at a retreat with some troubles haunting his mind, there are a lot of chances that they will haunt him/her all during the retreat, or at least at the beginning. To understand to how to forget oneself, one has to come as clean as possible psychologically. So, you first have to learn how to clean your psyche and then take your time to do so before going to a retreat meant to learn how to forget oneself. Failure to do so will reduce considerably the effects of such a retreat or even amplify one's psyche unbalance in the worst cases.

For the exiting phase, it is even more important. Going back to the sensations, feeling and emotions provided by society, and even more in the materialistic modern world which has so much to give, should be done very gradually. Failure to do so will result into lavishing in all the sensations the body can experience. For a lot of people this is seen like restoring the balance, which is right, it is restoring the balance according to one's old habits, regaining the weight you lost because your body got used to it. However, to reap the real benefits of a retreat, one shall try to find a new balance, less sensations, feelings and emotions related, exactly like having more healthy eating habits after a diet.

Of course, in the hobby world, retreats are just a consumer product with a feel good factor as a main selling point, meant to be consumed quickly in order to allow any posterior excess. Quite the opposite of the original aim of such exercises. Furthermore, people have totally forgotten that those practices linked to forgetting oneself are, in essence, not too great for mental health (nine out of ten going insane when the training is intense) and that it is better to concentrate one's energy on other exercises teaching to control one's emotions, under the supervision of a trustworthy person and always keeping an humble point of view.

Trust, Humility and Control

As an extended notion, ego also deals with the trust between teacher and student, humility in one's training and control of one's emotions. Let us briefly explain some of the reasons behind those requirements.

Trust

Nowadays, as a hobby, trust is not as big an issue as it used to be, not only because people don't use old martial arts to kill anymore, but also because they hardly reach the level where a too virtuous circle could almost instantly become a vicious one (the theory of the extremes, 物極必反). In the old days, trust was essential, and not only because, obviously, a master would not want to teach to somebody who could become an enemy. You had to have trust from the beginning of course, but even more importantly at the key moment when the student was starting to be able to become independent, close to bettering his/her teacher's level but still not there. This crucial moment, if not correctly handled, could just erase all the efforts, sacrifices and hard work previously made. The teacher was a guide, like a local mountain guide or dive master, and the higher or deeper you went, the more he/she was needed. The problem is obvious, higher and deeper is most of the time for people with quite some experience. However, this experience can become their downfall, thinking they know the mountain or the deep sea better, not following the advise of someone that is definitively more knowledgable on the specifics of the terrain. Because of this came the paradox: the closer you got to besting your teacher, the more you needed to follow strictly his advice, trust was the cornerstone of success. Hence all the what seems like games nowadays to test the trust bound between the teacher and the students all along the practice. One day a teacher comes and puts on the floor a piece of wood full of protruding nails and ask his/her students to jump on them...

Humility

Looking back at high mountains or deep sea, it is obvious that experienced people who don't follow a guide's advice are just lacking the humility they should have towards, not their guide, but the sea or the mountain. It was the same for Martists in the old days, they had to keep themselves always vigilant as far as the laws of nature were concerned, especially when reaching higher levels, and had to take any good advise they could find regardless of the level of the person giving it.

Humility had another function, the one described in the beginning quote, it was keeping the passion alive. Like everything in life, a student progression was made of up and downs and the risk was that, reaching a certain level, one would consider he "made it". Full of himself, he could only deplete... As in a circle, any point being an end and a beginning, Martists used humility, not false modesty, to be more on the beginning side than the end. After reaching a certain level, a Martist would reflect on his progress, enjoy the results, but, then, look forward to the higher peak to be reached, not feeling frustrated to first have to go through a natural downhill and enthusiastic of the higher uphill awaiting. This way their body would age but they would stay young at heart.

Control of the emotions

Wanting to forget about oneself before knowing how to control one's emotions is really putting the cart before the horse. Controlling one's emotions, for the old practices, was made through cleaning and balancing the organs, and breathing techniques around the term 息, which happens, apart from breath, to also mean to rest, to stop... Those being a very important part of the internal training, they will be developed in more details in a later post.

Working on one's ego, as a lot of things in the old practices, was first a question of method, what, when, how to do it, why, what were the dangers and hazards and how to avoid them.