This incense bowl is bronze, but even so it is changing, and you sense it always changing. In ten minutes there will be no more incense, but if it is very good incense you will feel as if something exists-- not forever-- you may not think in that way, but at least you think this incense exists and fire exists in that way, but the fire is not exactly the same fire as you are observing now with this fire in this candle. It is constant repetition of combustion-- like this-- there is electricity but the current goes back and forth but we see there constantly electric light. But that is not true. So we Buddhists call this a kind of naïve way of observing things as an aspect of being because we think everything exists in this way, in this aspect of being. --------------------------- Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture - 68-12-21 as found on shunryusuzuki.com. Edited by DC - Going through Suzuki lectures and posting anything that can stand on its own. Not looking for zingers or "the best of." I find that following these excerpts daily provides another way to experience Suzuki's teaching. - DC
