SR: When you pass a monastery officer’s seat, you have to bow.
Student: Do you bow even if he is not sitting there?
SR: Even when he is not there, you should bow. We call them Pure Rules. Pure Rules are not dualistic rules. Pure Rules are absolute rules, and it is not a matter of to obey or not to obey, you have to just do it. As you practice zazen, you just sit, and that is zazen.
Image generated by Google Gemini
—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 65-07-28-AN 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.
