Student: Was there enlightenment before the historical Buddha?
Suzuki: Yeah, according to Buddha, there were. Before he himself there were six buddhas.
Student: How about before the first? Was there enlightenment before him?
Suzuki: Before him? I don’t know. [Laughs, laughter.] He counts many millions of years, but it means he is not the only person who will attain enlightenment. This is everyone’s consciousness. So, he is not the only buddha. There are many...
—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.
