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Saturday, January 3, 2026

No Buddhism

So, we religious people deny the existence of the teaching. I say there is no Buddhism actually. And those who believe in Buddhism will say there is no Buddhism. And it is true for us. But if a scientist says there is no Buddhism, that is a big mistake [laughter]. We can say there is no Buddhism. If some philosopher says: “Philosophy includes everything. We can establish the authority of human beings by ourselves without any god or religion,” that is a big, big mistake [laughs]. Only those who believe in our teaching can say there is no Buddhism. When there is no Buddhism, you attained enlightenment.

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.