For Zen students the most important thing is not to be dualistic. We should not lose our self-satisfied state of mind. We should not be too demanding or we should not be too greedy. Our mind should be always rich and self-satisfied. When our mind becomes demanding, or when we become longing for something, we will violate our precepts not to kill, not to be immoral, not to steal, or not to tell a lie, and so on. Those are based on our greedy mind. When our mind is satisfied, we keep our precepts. When we ourselves are always self-satisfied, we have our original beauty, and we can practice good, and we are always true to ourselves. --------------------------- Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture - 65-11-11 - as found on shunryusuzuki.com, from one of the newly discovered (2021) or recently significantly added to or changed lecture tapes. 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. Go to https://www.instagram.com/cuke_archives/ for more daily Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts - with a photo
DC - This is the famous Beginner's Mind lecture. Since the audio tape was recently discovered, there is some material that differs from the transcripts that we had. What is excerpted from the new verbatim transcript will not include all of the verbatim lecture. For that and access to light edit and other transcribed versions and audio, go here.