Two Wheels

Our two important practices are zazen practice and listening to your teacher, or right teaching. This is just like two wheels of a vehicle. Without practice, you cannot understand teaching, you cannot listen to your teacher. And without listening to your teacher, your practice cannot be right practice.

Image generated by Google Gemini

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 70-08-03 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.

Featured Cuke Archives page

Wendy Pirsig was for thirty years an archivist and writer featuring extensive web-based history for the small Old Berwick Historical Society’s Counting House Museum in Maine. She’s a student of Myozen Joan Amaral at the Zen Center North Shore in Beverly, Massachusetts. She’s done extensive work for Cuke Archives on verbatim and minimum edit Shunryu Suzuki lectures and carefully scrutinizing DC writings and making sage suggestions. A few years ago she compiled and edited a posthumously published book of her late husband Robert Pirsig’s works: On Quality: An Inquiry Into Excellence: Unpublished and Selected Writings. Listen to our podcast and read more about her including a long piece on her and Robert’s six weeks with the SFZC following the murder of her stepson Chris in the neighborhood.

The Shōbōgenzō

Just to practice zazen as your teacher, that is the only way. If you have some doubt on this point, you should read the ninety-five volumes of The Shobogenzo—over and over again [laughs]. Then you will find out how important the beginner’s mind is.

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-03-26-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.

To Practice Zazen As Your Teacher

For a teacher, try to be a good teacher is how to teach Buddhism. That’s all. It is very difficult for a teacher to be an example for students, and at least for me it is absolutely impossible [laughs, laughter]. But if I try very hard to be a good friend of you within my ability, I think that there is no other way for us to study Buddhism. So, beginner’s mind is very important. Just to practice zazen as your teacher, that is the only way.

Photo by Robert S. Boni

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-03-26-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.

Walk Like Your Teacher Walks

A mother tiger doesn’t have so many things to teach for her children. Living with their children is how to teach [laughs]. Actually, there are not many things to tell you. With beginner’s mind, if you walk like your teacher walks, that is a way how to study Buddhism.

Drawing by Stan White

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-03-26-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.

Way-seeking Mind

How to achieve, or how to acquire this kind of calmness of the mind is to have right way-seeking mind, which is beyond any gaining idea. When you have right way-seeking mind, you have right practice, and there you have nirvana. If I speak too much about it, it sounds more and more like something unusual and difficult to attain, but it is not so. If you always retain a beginner’s mind, that is way-seeking mind.

Drawing by Mike Lane

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-03-26-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.

Unperturbable

If you do not know absolute serenity, even though you are in a calm, silent place, you will hear some noise, and you will feel scared even by a small mouse [laughs]. But if you have a stable, calm mind you will not be scared by even a thunderbolt. So, calmness is not something which exists outside of yourself. And it is not even a state of mind. It is something more than a state of mind. A state of mind is just temporal, but true calmness of your mind is unperturbable, and it exists forever.

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-03-26-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.

To See Two Sides

If you are not caught by the idea of calmness, you have calmness. If you are not caught by the idea of there is only one moon, the moon may be double. You will not be surprised to see double moon. So, oneness and duality is two sides of one coin. And serenity and noisy is dualistic, but it is not different.

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-03-26-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.

Featured Cuke Archives page

“Ryuko Laura Burges - is a lay entrusted Dharma teacher in the Soto Zen tradition, teaches classes and lectures and leads retreats in Northern California” – that’s from her SFZC bio. In this, her 3rd podcast, Laura tells a story from her latest book: Wisdom Stories of Tibet: Tales of Magic, Adventure, and Bravery. She also tells a Tassajara story and talks about her book on Recovery.

Double Moon

What is the double moon? Actually, the moon is one, so is the silence; silence is just one. But you say this place is calm and silent, and you compare silence with a noisy place. This is the double moon. But if you find calmness in a noisy place, that is to see the double moon as the opposite way of observing things.

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-03-26-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.