Easy

For me, you know, to be here right now is naturalness. And to wear robe is naturalness. And to shave my head is naturalness, as a priest [laughs]. In this way, we should practice our way and we should remember this. It is not so easy [laughs] to be natural. Not so easy.           --------------------------- Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki  lecture - 69-04-20 - as found on shunryusuzuki.com. Edited by DC  - Going through Suzuki lectures and posting anything that can stand on its own. Not looking for zingers or "the best of." I find that following these excerpts daily provides another way to experience Suzuki's teaching. Got to https://www.instagram.com/cuke_archives/ for more daily Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts - with a photo. 

Natural

If you say, “This is the way to be natural,” you know, that is not natural [taps table]. Only when you are you in its true sense, on this moment, at this place, that is “naturalness.” So there will not be any particular way to be “natural.”           --------------------------- Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki  lecture - 69-04-20 - as found on shunryusuzuki.com. Edited by DC  - Going through Suzuki lectures and posting anything that can stand on its own. Not looking for zingers or "the best of." I find that following these excerpts daily provides another way to experience Suzuki's teaching. Got to https://www.instagram.com/cuke_archives/ for more daily Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts - with a photo. 

Norm Randolph

In the forms of practice you can see a person's state of mind. If they're doing it in a sloppy way or a pride-filled way, you can see where the person is. It's evident in the forms. If you see somebody who's really doing it it looks completely natural - like how Katagiri would bow - not forced or arrogant or pompous in any way. I'd watch him bow before lecture and it would seem to come out of the circumstances of the moment. It wasn't always that way with Zen people. Suzuki Roshi said that the forms of practice he'd use like the sights on a gun. By looking at how students bowed and did oryoki or wore their robes, he was able to see their state of mind. It was in a lecture called "Warm-hearted practice" delivered in March of ‘71 at Tassajara when he came down for Peter's shuso ceremony and I think he stayed and gave it the day before or after.

That's from a 1995 interview with Norm Randolph. He's a guest for today's podcast. I read that interview and then went to a phone chat with him. 

Norm's a teacher with Dharma Field Zen Center in Minneapolis. 

Eyebrows

So to talk about enlightenment is rather, you know [laughs], foolish-- rather foolish. But sometime we have to talk about it in this way until we lose our eyebrows [laughs]. You know, to talk about it is to lose our eyebrows-- to lose ourselves. Instead of being ourselves.          --------------------------- Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki  lecture - 69-04-20 - as found on shunryusuzuki.com. Edited by DC  - Going through Suzuki lectures and posting anything that can stand on its own. Not looking for zingers or "the best of." I find that following these excerpts daily provides another way to experience Suzuki's teaching. Got to https://www.instagram.com/cuke_archives/ for more daily Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts - with a photo. 

Everything

We say, “One practice covers everything”-- various virtues. And when you practice your practice in that way, you may be a piece of stone, you may be a tree, you may be a star, you may be an ocean. So you cover everything.          --------------------------- Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki  lecture - 69-04-20 - as found on shunryusuzuki.com. Edited by DC  - Going through Suzuki lectures and posting anything that can stand on its own. Not looking for zingers or "the best of." I find that following these excerpts daily provides another way to experience Suzuki's teaching. Got to https://www.instagram.com/cuke_archives/ for more daily Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts - with a photo. 

Wave

One practice includes various virtues, and one feeling of practice will result in various feelings like a wave on the sea.         --------------------------- Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki  lecture - 69-04-20 - as found on shunryusuzuki.com. Edited by DC  - Going through Suzuki lectures and posting anything that can stand on its own. Not looking for zingers or "the best of." I find that following these excerpts daily provides another way to experience Suzuki's teaching. Got to https://www.instagram.com/cuke_archives/ for more daily Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts - with a photo. 

When

Back and forth when you understand our practice, you will enjoy your practice, thinking about what kind of practice you had had before you attained actual enlightenment. Sometime you will have pity on someone who is involved in wrong practice. And sometime you will laugh at yourself, you know, when you fell into, when you are involved in wrong practice. “Oh, what were you doing?” [Laughs.] You will, you know, laugh at-- you will tease yourself: “What are you doing?” You will have various feeling. All the real compassion or real love or true encouragement or true courage will arise from here. You will be not only courageous person but also you are very kind person when you reach-- when you understand yourself in that way.        --------------------------- Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki  lecture - 69-04-20 - as found on shunryusuzuki.com. Edited by DC  - Going through Suzuki lectures and posting anything that can stand on its own. Not looking for zingers or "the best of." I find that following these excerpts daily provides another way to experience Suzuki's teaching. Got to https://www.instagram.com/cuke_archives/ for more daily Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts - with a photo. 

Purpose

So the purpose of our practice is just to be yourself. When you become yourself in that way, you have real enlightenment. The enlightenment you have in your mind, that you attained long time ago is not actual enlightenment.        --------------------------- Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki  lecture - 69-04-20 - as found on shunryusuzuki.com. Edited by DC  - Going through Suzuki lectures and posting anything that can stand on its own. Not looking for zingers or "the best of." I find that following these excerpts daily provides another way to experience Suzuki's teaching. Got to https://www.instagram.com/cuke_archives/ for more daily Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts - with a photo. 

Cake

If you cannot see actually what is buddha-nature [taps], it doesn't mean anything [laughs]. It is painted rice cake. It is not actual one. If you want to see the actual rice cake, you should see it when it is there.       --------------------------- Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki  lecture - 69-04-20 - as found on shunryusuzuki.com. Edited by DC  - Going through Suzuki lectures and posting anything that can stand on its own. Not looking for zingers or "the best of." I find that following these excerpts daily provides another way to experience Suzuki's teaching. Got to https://www.instagram.com/cuke_archives/ for more daily Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts - with a photo. 

Fukanzazengi Study Book

Fukanzazengi study book (thanks Kokyo Henkle for sending this and thanks to his friend Paul Hoffman for scanning it. I've been wanting to find a copy of it for decades. It now joins some other character studies I did at Tassajara. This one in 1975. It's on the Early Papers and Print page. The Fukanzazengi is Dogen's best known work on zazen.- dc Kanji by dear and departed Ryogen Yoshimura.