Kay Larson

Suffering builds character and impels you to penetrate life__ secrets. It__ the path of great artists, great religious leaders, great social reformers. The problem is not suffering per se, but rather our identification with our own ego: our divided, dualistic, cramped view of things. __e are too ego-centered,_ Suzuki tells Cage._ The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow. We seem to carry it all the time from childhood up to the time we finally pass away.

So it is with the places preparing to teach us. It's only when the heart begins to beat wildly and without pattern__hen it begins to realize its boundlessness__hat its newly adamant pulse bangs on the walls of its cage and is bruised by its enclosure... To feel the heart pound is only the beginning. Next is to feel the hurt__he tearing of the psyche__he prelude of entry into the place one has always feared. One fears that place because of being drawn to it, loving it, and wanting to be taught by it. Without the need to be taught, who would feel the psyche rip? Without the bruise, who would know where the walls are?

Suffering builds character and impels you to penetrate life__ secrets. It__ the path of great artists, great religious leaders, great social reformers. The problem is not suffering per se, but rather our identification with our own ego: our divided, dualistic, cramped view of things. __e are too ego-centered,_ Suzuki tells Cage. __he ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow. We seem to carry it all the time from childhood up to the time we finally pass away.__dolescent love gives us the first chance to break the shell. Sexual love makes the ego lose itself in the object it loves. __hen the ego-shell is broken and the __ther_ is taken into its own body, we can say that the ego has denied itself or that the ego has taken its first steps towards the infinite._The religious consciousness is now fully awakened, and all the possible ways of escaping from the struggle or bringing it to an end are most earnestly sought in every direction. Books are read, lectures are attended, sermons are greedily taken in, and various religious exercises or disciplines are tried.__uzuki says that sexual love is a vehicle of liberation? A crack in the ego shell? A path to the infinite?At this point, if I were Cage, I would buy the book and take it home.