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Monday, March 9, 2026

Discipline

Student: What attitude can we take towards disciplining ourselves? 

Suzuki: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s very good question. And it is difficult to know by yourself, actually. So that is why it is better to practice with people. If there is a set of rules or an explanation, it may be easier. But unfortunately, we are not all the same. So the practice is for you, and you are practicing. So strictly speaking, there is no rule and no standard to say this is good or bad, right or wrong. That is why we emphasize buddha-nature.

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.