Our practice should be based on the idea of selflessness. This selflessness is very difficult to understand. If you try to be selfless, that is already a selfish idea [laughs]. We don’t know what to do, how to cope with this. Perhaps you have tried various ways, but selflessness is not something which you can try. It should be there when you do not try anything. Selflessness is not something which you can be aware of. But for us, it is necessary to know how difficult it is.
Photo by Judith Keenan
—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the photo. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 69-03-16 as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. Go to instagram.com/cuke_archives for the Instagram version.