Good Morning, Boss

One Zen master always called up the boss, and he used to say, “Ohayo gozaimasu, boss” [laughs] “good morning, boss,” “good evening, boss,” “how are you, boss?” The neighbors wondered, he might be crazy. He was always going around saying “good morning” and “good night.” He had no boss, so he must have been crazy. But he was always calling up the big boss who’s always doing something. Even when sleeping, he is doing something [laughs]. If you forget all about the boss, you may eat too much. When you know you are under the control of the big boss, you will not eat too much. You will not do anything wrong. Whatever you do will be right.

Image generated by Leonardo.Ai

—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 65-07-27-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.