Zen for Absolute Beginners 433: The Purpose of Zen
655. There is neither birth nor destruction where the ignorant see impermanency; nothing is ever destroyed, what is seen [as real] is due to [the idea of] a causal agency. How is the unseen [born]? By what does the impermanent world come into existence?
[Zen indeed makes most of the Prajna element at least during its first stages of training, and this Prajna which it teaches is to be attained by transcending the relativity of worldly knowledge, which] will free our desires and passions from the entanglements of the individualistic world-conception. It does not teach to destroy all the impulses, instincts, and affective factors that make up the human heart; it only teaches to clear up our intellectual insight from erroneous discriminations and unjustifiable assertions,- for when this is done the heart knows by itself how to work out its native virtues. - Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra, p101 ]
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