Free from the Ordinary Framework

In sitting, I think some of you must have found some unusual experience. It means you acquired freedom, whether how you felt about it was pleasant [laughs], whether it was sad or whether it was ecstasy or joy, is not the question. Whatever it is, something that you have found out—or what the experience was—it means you are free from the ordinary framework of your thinking, or way of life.

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-08-17N as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. Go to instagram.com/cuke_archives for the Instagram version.

Not Wasting Time

When we completely understand how we live in this world, that is the enlightenment. That is the way to have some meaning in our life in its true sense. It is the actual way of not wasting our life. We should not waste our time in unnecessary thinking or study. If you want to study, study something [laughs] which is true and real.

Tassajara han

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-08-17N as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. Go to instagram.com/cuke_archives for the Instagram version.

Ultimate Truth

When you wonder why, it means you are already caught by superficial thinking—you are trying to understand our practice in a superficial way, without any conviction, without believing in this ultimate truth. No one can deny what I’m saying just now. I’m just saying the truths as they are. I have no particular teaching for you [laughs].

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-08-17N as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. Go to instagram.com/cuke_archives for the Instagram version.

Completely

To do something is the only way to understand what it is. To be involved in what you are doing completely, without thinking. Then you will understand what it is. If you have difficulty, that is good. If you have pleasure doing it, that is also good. And pleasure is not just pleasure. When you do something completely, absorbed in your activity, that is not just experience. It is more than experience; it is more than understanding.

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-08-17N as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. Go to instagram.com/cuke_archives for the Instagram version.

Caught

Because we have some particular view of life, without knowing what it means in its true sense, we are caught by those views of life, or a teaching or a philosophy, whatever religion, whatever it is.

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-08-17N as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. Go to instagram.com/cuke_archives for the Instagram version.

Necessity To Know?

So, Itself is Buddha, and Mind is Buddha. And Is is Buddha. Being is Buddha, and Buddha is Buddha. Buddha is, of course, Buddha, although we don’t know what it is! [Laughs, laughter.] And there’s no need to know what it is, because we are Buddha! If so, what is the necessity for us to know who he is?

Art by Kakinuma Ninshou

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-08-17N as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. Go to instagram.com/cuke_archives for the Instagram version.

Featured Cuke Archives page

I first met Jesse Wiens Chu at Tassajara about twenty years ago. Now he and his wife Catherine live around the corner. They both have extensive training in Buddhist practice and are NVC (Nonviolent Communication) teachers. Learn about them and their practice at babatree.org and check out their book Ongo and ongobook.com. Learn about all that and more in this podcast with Jesse. - dc

A Film about Bill Porter (Red Pine)

Dancing with the Dead follows the life of Bill Porter, who goes by the pen name Red Pine, an author and renowned translator of ancient Chinese poetry. The child of a bank robber, Bill turned his back on American devotion to materialism and set off to the Zhongnan Mountains in China to uncover something deeper. This film offers a glimpse into poetry and mountain solitude as a path to enlightenment.

This film will be available to stream until midnight on Friday, February 28, 2025 for subscribers to Tricycle. tricycle.org/filmclub/dancingwiththedead/

All

If you point at one point of the earth, you point at the whole universe. Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. If you compare one thing to another in a materialistic way, you are caught by an idea of freedom or of restriction. But if you have this kind of understanding of reality, all the being, all of something that is, is Buddha.

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-08-17N as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. Go to instagram.com/cuke_archives for the Instagram version.

Included

And “Itself” is Buddha. When you understand something through and through, that is “Itself.” If you understand suffering through and through, that is Buddha. There’s no other Buddha. All the rest of Buddha, including Shakyamuni Buddha, is included in that “Itself.”

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-08-17N as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. Go to instagram.com/cuke_archives for the Instagram version.

Reality Is Buddha

When we say “Buddha,” there is no need to say, “Is” or “Mind itself.” When we say “is", “is” is being, or suchness or thusness. Being is Buddha. Being—something which exists as it is, is “Being.” Those being is Buddha, actual being is Buddha. Reality is Buddha.

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-08-17N as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. Go to instagram.com/cuke_archives for the Instagram version.

Mind Itself Is Buddha

In the Shobogenzo, in the fascicle of Sokushin Zebutsu, it says “Mind itself is Buddha.” What is mind, and what is Buddha? In conclusion he says, “Mind is Buddha, and Buddha is Buddha, and Is is Buddha.” There’s four characters. Buddha—Mind itself is. Mind itself is Buddha. And he says, “Mind is Buddha, and Is is Buddha, and Itself is Buddha. Buddha is Buddha” [laughs, laughter]. Do you understand this riddle?

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-08-17N as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. Go to instagram.com/cuke_archives for the Instagram version.

The Podcast audio has been fixed.

A Chat with Chat GPT on Religion | Podcast - Getting irritated by the simplistic approach toward "religion" from famous atheists like Neil deGrasse Tyson, I turn to ChatGPT. Not incidentally, I love listening to Tyson when he knows what he's talking about.

Thorough Understanding

To know things as it is means to let everything act as they want. “Let it be free.” Because you want to bind it, you have difficulties. It means having a thorough understanding of our life. And our practice should be based on a thorough understanding of our human life, and a thorough understanding of all the rest of existence.

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-08-17N as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. Go to instagram.com/cuke_archives for the Instagram version.

That’s All

“Oh, reality is good, [laughs] people are enjoying.” That’s all. That is the kind of understanding we have. So, knowing things through and through is the point, without criticizing what is. If you like, you can criticize it, but that criticism has nothing to do with big mind [laughs].

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-08-17N as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. Go to instagram.com/cuke_archives for the Instagram version.

Featured Cuke Archives page

The Podcast audio should work now.

A Chat with Chat GPT on Religion | Podcast - Getting irritated by the simplistic approach toward "religion" from famous atheists like Neil deGrasse Tyson, I turn to ChatGPT. Not incidentally, I love listening to Tyson when he knows what he's talking about.

A Bird in the Sky

When you accept difficulties with confidence, with big mind, or when you let your difficulty work out its true function, then you have no difficulty—that is not difficulty anymore. The difficulty is like a bird flying in the sky. Your mind is the sky that knows what it is, “Oh, a bird is flying.” That’s all [laughter].

Image from “Birds At Tassajara” by William W. Sterling

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-08-17N as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. Go to instagram.com/cuke_archives for the Instagram version.