This kind of story was told by Buddha so that people would not make any mistake about him. If he said, “I am the first one,” people would make a big mistake [laughter]. So, he said, “I am not the first one.” But at the same time, he said, “This is not the first time for me to attain enlightenment. I attained enlightenment many, many times.” It means his enlightenment is for everyone. Everyone has his enlightenment.
—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.
