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Saturday, November 1, 2025

Unconditional Requests

[About inmost request.] Something—someone, I don’t know who it is, but someone tells us to do so. We hear that voice always, so I cannot help doing so because someone is telling me to do so or someone is telling me “please help me.” We cannot help doing so, not because “this is Buddhism” or “this is big patience,” not because of what Buddha said. It is an unconditional request for us. We have this kind of nature. If it is supreme teaching, absolute teaching, it is impossible to achieve. It is impossible to understand it. This is big patience, and this is not even a matter of big or small. It may be very small—sometimes it may be the smallest patience.

cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 65-07-28-D 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.