When you become the successor of your master in a Japanese art, you will receive some paper on which something is written. No one knows what it is [laughter, laughs]. It is very difficult to figure out what it is, and to explain what it is. But if you have a beginner’s mind, it’s all right. If you can just say, “Thank you very much” from the bottom of your heart, that’s enough. But this is very difficult [laughs]. So, through our practice, we must make our beginner’s mind more and more. We should appreciate beginner’s mind. This is the secret of Zen practice.
—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 65-11-11 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.
