Inheritance is not very cool but it doesn't hurt a lot if it's just for the sake of this single method. If you don't want to use stage 0 transforms, you can use a base class instead:
If you're working with createClass-style components, use the mixin. It's exactly the same as React.addons.PureRenderMixin.
shallowEqual
Sometimes shallowEqual is all you need. It's bad to reach out into React internals, so this library exposes exactly the same shallowEqual you already know and love from React.
Known Issues
If a component in the middle of your rendering chain has pure rendering, but some nested component relies on a context change up the tree, the nested component won't learn about context change and won't update. This is a known React issue that exists because context is not a documented feature and is not finished. However some React libraries already rely on context, for example, React Router. My suggestion for now is to use pure components in apps relying on such libraries very carefully, and only use pure rendering for leaf-ish components that are known not to rely on any parent context.