Sooner or later, you will reach the same point, which is inmost request or enlightenment or whatever you call buddha-nature. Then you will find out that all you do has been based on your inmost request. Before you didn’t know that. You were just wandering about. But after that, you will know the oneness of wandering about and enlightened life. Before you realize your inmost nature, for you that is wandering about. But for Buddha it is not so. But for you it is wandering about. Once you know what it was for, you will find out the meaning of what you have been doing. This is to go up and to come down. This is understanding on a big, big scale [laughs]. It does not mean to be a philosopher or to be a Zen master. It is possible for everyone.
—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 65-07-29-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.
