Thursday, April 28, 2011

Pure Bred

"By purity we do not mean to polish something, trying to make some impure thing pure. By purity we just mean things as they are."--Shunryu Suzuki

Through Zen practice, we purify our minds of the slag and dross of egotism. The ego is a delusion covering our true nature. The goal of practice is not to reform the ego, but to realize our true self.

There was a king's son, who, being expelled in infancy from his native city, was brought up by a forester, and, growing up to maturity in that state, imagined himself to belong to the barbarous race with which he lived. One of his father's ministers having discovered him, revealed to him what he was, and the misconception of his character was removed, and he knew himself to be a prince. —Quoted by Henry David Thoreau in Walden

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