As we are human beings, it is impossible to keep Dogen’s pure teaching always fresh and in use, but everyone agreed that his cover was the best cover, anyway. No dust [laughs] can enter the pan; it is so perfect a cover. So, we have to have some Soto priests who can understand what Shobogenzo is. And there must be many Zen masters who are actually practicing zazen. But those who practice zazen will make some mistakes, you know. So, we should have a cover. By mistake I mean dust [laughter]. Soon we will be dusty. There may be many, many misunderstandings of Zen. When we enter some dead end, we should find out what we are doing. That is Shobogenzo.
—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 65-07-28-C 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.