Distinguishing ego from true self

(Quotations from Dennis Genpo Merzel)

What is your true self? It will forever be a mystery, because it is ungraspable and unknowable. Though it is beyond all labels and words, forever unnameable, we give true self all kinds of names: Mind, Buddha, true nature, original face. They are just labels. When you experience true self, you just experience it. There is no one there experiencing it; there is just it.
(p. 14)

The other side of the coin is that I am not it. What we normally define as who we are, this particular body and mind, is not it. The light, the divine, Buddha-nature, no matter what you call it, only comes through me, as it comes through you. When we drop attachment to body and mind there is no distinction between it and self. As the Third Patriarch (of Zen Buddhism) says, any distinction we make sets heaven and earth infinitely apart. If we attach to the notion that "I am it," then our egos swell up and we become very arrogant. We must avoid clinging to the experience of enlightenment, the realization of being it. It flows through me; I am just a conduit.
(p. 54)

©1999 by Deb Platt


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