The Reward AND The Danger

 

The reward for eliminating the ego is tremendous. It has been given many names: Enlightenment, Bodhi, Satori, Nirvana, Heaven. The reward is peace and equanimity, and tremendous spiritual power.

 

Yet the lure of reward carries its own dangers. If you should for one moment work to reduce your ego for the sake of personal reward, you will pervert everything you have set out to do, for you will then be serving none other than the very ego you are supposed to destroy. You will have fallen for the most cunning disguise of the ego - that of a permanent "soul" which you have to serve so that it can get all kinds of "spiritual" rewards, like an eternal life in heaven.

 

Many who "dedicate their lives" to truth or a cause or religion in fact work for their own rewards. You recognize them easily by their inflated egos, and their ignorance of their own self-righteousness, arrogance and vanity.

 

The Taoist sage goes the way of the Tao not for reward, but because she is in harmony with the Tao.

 

She cannot do anything else.

 

The ignorantly sincere

vainly try to reduce their egos,

but their egos grow only bigger.

The wise person

ignores his ego

and serves selflessly,

so that his self,

starved of thought,

disappears.

The person in total harmony with the Tao

has no ego,

for she has entered

emptiness

and lives

with compassion.

(The Tao is Tao, 133)