[Responding to a question about vegetarianism.] You know, not only animals [laughter], but the vegetables you eat are also living beings. This kind of discussion is not purely a religious discussion. But it is religious because if we do something wrong, that action will create another bad action or habit. This is a very important point. If you do something wrong, that experience will create some other bad conduct.
—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 65-07-29-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.
