When you take a religious viewpoint, everything becomes opposite [laughs]. If you are talking from a scientific standpoint, and we are talking from a religious standpoint, the same statement makes a big difference. When we say, “Zen is wonderful. Whatever you do, that is Zen. Even though you are doing something wrong, that is Zen. Whatever you do is Zen. That is why I like Zen.” [Laughter] I think you will have this kind of misunderstanding about Zen. But what we actually mean is quite opposite.
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—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.