Now, what I want to ask is, what is our practice? What is pure practice? As I said just now, all practices will be dualistic. When it is dualistic, it looks like rigid rules, but it is not so for a man who realizes true self. Because it is impossible to figure out what it is, we ignore true self. It is not interesting—or you cannot have any interest in studying true self because it is empty. It is empty, but it is there! [Laughs.] But if you ignore this boss, you will suffer a lot.
Drawing by Stan White
—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.
