By inmost nature I don’t mean a soul but something that’s always in incessant work. Whatever you call it, spirit or soul, I don’t mind [laughs]. You can put many names or interpretations on it, but the interpretations are intellect. So, whatever you call it—inmost nature itself, doesn’t mind [laughs, laughter]. Some may call it soul. Some may call it spirit. Someone may say, “Oh, no, no, that is just a material function.” Maybe. People will put many names to it, but our inmost nature is our inmost nature regardless of the name.
Drawing by Stan White
—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 65-07-22 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.
