Before you see buddha-nature, you see your mind. You watch your mind. When you watch your mind, when you say, “My zazen is very poor zazen” [laughs], here you have true nature. But you do not realize that is true nature. You ignore it—this is a silly mistake. There is immense importance in the “I” when you watch your mind. That “I” is not dead “I.” That “I” is always incessant activity. That “I” is always acting. That “I” is always swimming. That “I” is always flying through vast air with wings. By “wings,” I mean thinking and various activity. That “I” is flying through the vast sky.
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—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 65-07-30-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.
