We're using terms very differently, and to be honest I do not appreciate your condescending tone, assuming that whenever we disagree or don't understand one another it's because I lack the perfect understanding of Buddhism you claim to have. The way you are using terms like 'ego' is not at all the way I deploy them from an ontological/philosophic perspective. Distinguishing between conscious awareness of your actions and "ego-induced" negative thoughts is, by my use of the terms, a nonsensical distinction.
I have written probable hundreds of pages of my thoughts on identity and ego here. If you are that interested in my views, page through my history. I'm a Lacanian, so having a shallow back-and-forth discussion about terms we're not even defining in the same way is not going to be at all productive. Better yet, read The Sublime Object of Ideology and The Ticklish Subject, both by Slavoj Zizek.
Other people claiming ego death on psychedelics are also not using 'ego' the way you are. You're misinterpreting them greatly, it sounds like, which led to this post conflating Buddhism with tripping. Ego death means losing sense of yourself as a distinct, conscious individual - not remaining conscious but being somehow 'above' petty 'ego-induced' issues. It's a radically different way of being-in-the-world.
I know I'm in the minority in this hippie love fest of a board for thinking anger, hate and even violence are natural and productive parts of human existence. Universal love is an ideological falsehood, in my opinion; for love to be meaningful, it cannot by its very nature be universal. To quote Zizek: "I've always been disgusted by this notion of oh, I love the world. I don't like the world. I'm somewhere between indifferent to the world or I hate it. All of reality, it just is. It's stupid. It's out there. I don't care about it. No, love for me is an extremely violent act, again this structure of imbalance: I pick out one element, a fragile individual person, and say, 'I love you more than anything else.' In this strictly formal sense, love is evil."
At any rate... to sum it up, I'm a psychoanalytic nihilist. I have very precise views about the nature of the ego based on the theories of Lacan et al, and I believe the 'goal' of philosophy/theology/life itself is to find ways to see beauty in the world rather than ugliness. I think Buddhism contains within it a predisposition against that which is. The Boddhisatva is the perfect model of ressentiment and a life of reactivity as Nietzsche would put it; all of life, all that is, is reduced to a trap of suffering and the goal becomes to escape it. Those who escape this cycle can do the ultimate selfless good of returning to the world of the living even when they could be "free" from it, to help "free" others by bringing them to enlightenment. Any religion or philosophy that values some transcendental realm, whether it be the infinite Oneness of nirvana or the harps-and-clouds of Christian heaven, I view with suspicion. There is value in some Buddhist teachings, but the way Buddhist monks and monastic sects in particular view the path to enlightenment bothers me deeply.
It's not about how attached you are to modern culture. It's about how attached you are to *living in the world.* "Monk" has a very precise meaning. If what you mean is that you plan to study Buddhism under Buddhist teachers and monks as part of a personal journey or exploration, that's great, but that's not at all what becoming a monk means. Sure, you *can* choose to leave after you join, but it's not something you plan to do temporarily. It's a huge commitment to dedicate your life to an ideology.
Philosophy, spirituality, religion.... Call it what you will, it's productive if and only if it helps people live better, happier lives. If you have to abandon your 'normal' life to follow a given philosophy or spiritual code, in my eyes that destroys any potential value that system may have otherwise possessed. If there is some state of being called 'enlightenment' that is possible and desirable to reach, I don't think you have to live on a monastery or abandon personal property to get there.
Samsara is also a deeply disturbing concept to me. It's absolutely the wrong relationship to the pleasure principle to simply demonize the pursuit of pleasure as the source of all wrong and suffering. Lacanian theory offers me a much more useful explanation of the pleasure principle, how it works structurally, and how one can adapt their lives around it.
The very idea that enlightenment is something you either attain or don't is also a big problem for me, if I haven't made that clear enough already. It's not an end goal to reach. If the concept of enlightenment is meaningful at all, in my mind it has to be a process, a way of living life, not a static state you either reach and then remain at or never reach. Speaking of identity, it really sounds like you're fetishizing this identity-position of "enlightened Buddhist monk" in a problematic way, but that's a discussion for another time.
I'm happy to answer any specific questions but if you want to "debate Buddhism" with me, please take it to PM. I've gone through this whole routine a billion times on here and it's getting old even for me, so I can only imagine how sick the other regulars must be of me rambling about Lacan
