Enlightenment is not some certain stage. Enlightenment is everywhere. Wherever you are, enlightenment is there. Whatever you do, if you do it with your best effort, that is enlightenment. This point is very important for our Zen practice and for our everyday life. So, to practice Zen is a part of everyday life. In everyday life we should make our effort. Without our effort in everyday life, just coming to sit here for forty minutes, that is not Zen at all.
—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 65-12-11-A as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. These posts are also on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram. We are continually working on improving the quality of transcriptions of Suzuki's lectures. After a new "verbatim transcript" is made, we create a minimally edited version which is more readable. See the most recently completed transcripts at shunryusuzuki.com/n.
