We normally can't just be let go of unbeneficial ego instantly, so it's often better to try to change the ego's views and thoughts concerning what it thinks is happiness.
This is a gradual process. If you could totally let go of your ego right now, supposedly, that's enlightenment. You're going to get it straight away. However you're probably not going to be able to let go of it totally now. (I don't mind if you surprise me.) So can we bend the energies of what the ego wants? Can we start changing it, can we lessen our selfish ego and change it into a giving, caring, and compassionate ego?
So in the letting go process, if we look at it as more of a gradual process, it helps to think of the letting go of the ego, totally, as beyond us at present. So instead, think of changing the ego from a selfish ego into a selfless ego, an ego that wants to give, that wants to develop the Paramis, not just for the benefit of others but for the benefit of ourselves. In that way, to change what you think is happiness can help, to actually look at what we call happiness and consider whether it is really a selfish happiness or an unselfish happiness. And then you'll see, if you're objective enough, that you get a deeper happiness when you're unselfish.
Think about this, which makes you happier, when you are giving unselfishly, or when you're taking selfishly, which makes you happier?
In one of the 20-day retreat talks, I give an example of two people using $50.
Someone goes to Disneyland, has lots of fun, goes on lots of rides, round and round, goes up and down and whatever, spends $50. Someone else takes that $50 and changes it into coins, if you're in Thailand 10 baht pieces maybe, here you have the Euro, and walks the streets in a big city and gives out the coins to beggars one at a time. It takes them all day, if not more. The same amount of money was spent in one day. One person has a happy time satisfying their sense pleasures. Another person has a time of giving, giving, giving.
What's going to happen in the future, especially if someone becomes a meditator?
When I was young and visited my relatives in Los Angeles, yeah, I visited Disneyland! Now I don't know how much money it was then, yet I won't do it again because that's not something I believe will help the world.
Now for someone like me, when I reflect on the time that I had at Disneyland, there's no happiness in my reflection at all. But when I reflect on giving to beggars, I feel happiness. It can be that simple.