This is the Cuke Archives page for what’s being featured each day.
Our other two Zen sites: shunryusuzuki.com - all the transcripts, audio, film, photo archive
and ZMBM.net - for Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.
New 2021: Audiobook for Crooked Cucumber & Zen Is Right Now: More Teaching Stories and Anecdotes of Shunryu Suzuki
Youtube Cuke Archives - Posts from here also appear on Facebook Cuke Archives
Core Books by and about Shunryu Suzuki -- People Index -- DC home -- DC Books
Cuke Podcasts - Instagram Cuke Archives - - Donate
For personal, environment, music, etc, go to Cuke nonZense Blog and cuke-annex
Search cuke blog 
Search Cuke.com

Friday, November 7, 2025

A Book Is A Book

Buddha told us the four noble truths to destroy our easy way of scientific understanding or philosophical understanding. Those ways are easy. Without any effort you can read books even when you are lying down [laughter]. Very easy, but it actually will not help you. If you realize it will help you to do something, then that is right understanding. But when you read some interesting philosophy, when you are interested in something unusual, you may feel as if you are doing the right thing [laughs]. We are not doing the right thing. A book is a book, and your life is your life.

Image generated by Google Gemini

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.