Student: If I were to take out a revolver and put a bullet in your head, for example, would that make me less of a human being?
Suzuki: A being with two legs and two hands, and thinking something is good or bad, half and half [laughs]—if you think that you will be protected as a human being, that is a big, big mistake. That is an abuse of human beings. It is treating human beings as the lowest enemy or creature. That’s awful.
—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 65-07-30-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.
