Your Room

To move from being selfish and greedy to trying not to be that way is like taking down all the drab and ugly pictures in your room and putting up pretty pictures. 

But if that room is a prison cell, you’ve changed the decorations and they look a little better, but still the freedom you want isn’t there; you’re still imprisoned in the same room. 

Changing the pictures on the wall from greed, anger and ignorance into ideals (that we should not be greedy, angry, or ignorant) improves the decoration, perhaps – but leaves us without freedom.

--Charlotte Joko Beck, Everyday Zen