For a religious mind there is no fear of death. The fear of death exists in the realm of thinking or emotions. When you attach to something, for instance, that is the beginning of the fear of death. When you attach to your body, that is fear of death. And when you don’t know what will become of you, you will become very uneasy. That is fear of death. But for a person who has become aware of their inmost request or inmost nature or absolute nature, that is a more important thing than a physical body. It is so. When you are not serious enough, you fear death. But when you become very serious about yourself, you will not be afraid of losing your body.
—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.
