What we are discussing here is not philosophy at all. If you understand what I say, I think it is possible to know what I mean by buddha-nature. It is possible because although my English is not good, I think I can express myself about buddha-nature in my poor English [laughs]. That is why I repeat the same thing over and over again. When I think you don’t understand, [laughs] I will repeat it until you understand it. If my words are not good enough, I will hit you [laughter]. Then you will understand what I mean. As long as I understand it, someday you will understand what I mean. If you don’t understand me just now, someday you will understand. Someday someone will understand. This is great patience. I think I will wait for an island to go to Seattle from Los Angeles [laughs]. They say it is moving like a boat in millions of years. By the time it reaches Seattle [laughs], someone will understand it.
—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 65-07-29-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.
