Guest Blog by Kirit Bhansali

Kate’s Sermon on October 25, 2020, inspired me to think more about letting go.  When I asked myself, what is preventing me to let go, the answer was ego.  So I wrote to Kate if she would do a sermon on Ego versus Self-esteem.  She asked me to write a blog on the subject instead.  Following are my thoughts.

The search for my answer took me to my childhood in India, and my upbringing as a Jain.  (Jainism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism) The essence of what I was taught is summarized in one sentence:  Jains spend life learning how to control their desires and not let desires control them.  This simple concept, when executed leads you to eventually learn to control the ego.  I will leave the details of how to do this and how to discipline your mind through Jain Meditation for future discussion.  However, I always used to ask my Jain mentors who were mainly my older sister and my mother, and occasionally a Jain monk, the difference between ego and self esteem.  I got confusing answers and I do not remember all the details.  I got busy with my engineering education and put my spiritual journey aside except to meditate everyday to calm myself down.

When I came to the USA to further my engineering education, I struggled with the cultural differences.  I encountered lots of egos, and lots of prejudice rooted in ego.  I started thinking about how to handle the prejudiced and egotist people.  However, I first had to understand what is ego.  Yes, the old question popped again, what is the difference between ego and self-esteem.  I found, in general, people with low self-esteem used ego as crutch and tried to find something to put me down to feel superior.

Once, I learned this, I changed my approach.  Rather than get upset, I tried to find something that would make them feel good.  For example, a fellow graduate student, I will call him Tom, used to call me names, Smarty, hotdog, etc.  At first it made me really upset.  Then, I approached him, hey Tom, will you teach me how to ski.  Bam, we became good friends!  I contributed to raising his self-esteem and his ego.

This epiphany was rooted in my sister explaining me the following:  Ego is rooted in low self-esteem and self-respect is rooted in a sense of accomplishment.  Ego is external and self esteem internal in interactions.  Invariably, ego leads one to feeling better by defaming someone else whereas self-esteem is generated by a sense of accomplishment.  However, there is fine line between ego and self esteem.  I found, in the graduate school in the US, we are graded on a curve, which leads to competition.  On the other hand in India, we were graded on an absolute test score and you competed only with yourself to get the best score.  As a result, we used to help each other in our studies.  When, I first came here, I used to do that then I realized the competitive nature of the grading system.

Eventually, I realized such completion was prevalent in every aspect of American culture.  In a research environment, I found people would talk to you to get your ideas or even steal patents.  While these social problems are generated as a result of insecurities, one has to keep in mind not to let self-esteem lead one to developing ego.

So, in my opinion, the minute you compare your accomplishment to someone else, you start competing and the outcome is ugly.  Either you develop ego by feeling superior or low self-esteem and insecurity, which could lead to depression.  To summarize: feel good about your accomplishments and do not gloat.