When you are healthy and practice zazen in this way, true nature is just calm and inexplicable. But when you have some actual problem like when you have pain in your legs, you will have direct experience of your true nature [laughs]. But don't mistake that for true nature. That is true nature plus something—plus your painful legs. Something is added to true nature, and true nature takes the form of pain. This relationship is very important, and if you understand this relationship, your true nature and your pain, that is a key to solving all the problems of life.
Image created by Google Gemini
—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 65-07-26-A 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.
