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Saturday, September 20, 2025

No Alternative Way

I’m going to talk now about the problem of choosing one of the two: good or bad. Refraining from bad to take good is way-seeking mind, not from a moral viewpoint but from a religious viewpoint. When we take a religious viewpoint, there is no alternative way. We choose good, and we refrain from bad. There is no alternative way. But if you have no way-seeking mind, or if you have no idea of religion, you will wonder which to choose.

Image generated by Leonardo.AI

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