The most important point is not to be one-sided. Practice and study are both important. But it is not possible for anyone to achieve everything. So, as I said, to have the same cover [laughs], is very important. The cover should not be used. When you do something, you should take off the cover [laughs]. If you want to boil something with a cover [laughs], you will get confusion. For us the cover is the Shobogenzo. This is perfect understanding of our way. But perfect understanding will not work [laughs]. It’s too perfect [laughs]. But it will keep dust from the pan [laughs], and if you put a cover on your pan, you can use it whenever you want to use your pan. So, it is very important to have a cover for it.
—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 65-07-28-C 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.
