Dogen said, “Don’t be attached even to the evil which is not here. To attach to the evil which is not here means purity.” If there is no evil here, you are pure. But don’t be attached to even the state of mind you have in purity. And even though you are not pure, don’t try to escape from it. If you try to escape from it, it means you are attached to purity. A small ego is working still [laughs]. Your small ego is trying to push out an evil thought. So still you are occupied by small ego as long as you are trying to get out of it.
—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 65-07-29-A as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. These posts are also on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram. We are continually working on improving the quality of transcriptions of Suzuki's lectures. After a new "verbatim transcript" is made, we create a minimally edited version which is more readable. See the most recently completed transcripts at shunryusuzuki.com/n.
