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Dirk Hanss wrote:
@Erick,
as long as someone is referring to himself (me - my family - my house - my village - my tribe - my nation - my race), it still is ego-centered.
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Understood. The example could have been stated more broadly, but I speak from moral cases (and responsibilities) closest to me -- to ensure at the very least that I do not get frighteningly abstract.
Alas, I do not pretend to lack an ego (huge -- monstrous really, obscenely so in the hinder parts) Nor could anyone so claim who is not yet a saint, sage or bodhisattva. The point is that ego for most folks is far more capable of extension than it is of extinction. "An infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere." I am as privileged to be the center as anyone else is, but not more so.
The big leap is extending ego past, Me Myself and I; the next hardest is not to rigidify in "Me v. Other" at some other scale (clan, tribe etc.). The remaining hurdles become progressively smaller to jump if one remains committed to the paradigm.
I am too late for Easter, but I carry on nonetheless --
"Hoppitty, hop-hop, hoppity hop-hop ..."
Cordially,
Erick Mead