Religious mind is so strong. If it is necessary, one will burn their physical body. If your true nature tells you to burn up your body, that’s all right [laughs]. It is so strong, much stronger than emotions. You cannot do that by emotions; just your true nature can do it. But when I say this, you will have some misunderstanding. That is why we have “cover.” That is why we have the Shobogenzo. What is true religion? Just to jump into a fire is not religion. Sometimes a crazy person will do that. So, right understanding of our inmost nature is very important. That is why we have a teacher, and why we have Shobogenzo.
The Venerable Thich Quảng Đức Monument
—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 65-07-28-D 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.