In morality you have freedom of choice. You can take bad instead of good [laughs]. But in religion we have no alternative way. But it is our choice. Which way to go is up to us. And yet for us there is no other way than to take good. This is way-seeking mind. To pursue truth and beauty is also our way-seeking mind. There is some difference from ethics. This mind is the traditional mind transmitted from Buddha to us, and for Zen students this spirit is most important.
Drawing by Stan White
—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.