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Thursday, March 12, 2026

Holiness

The West tried for a long time to remove the idea of holiness and to establish human authority in the intellectual realm. And they thought it would disappear, but fortunately or unfortunately it didn’t [laughs]. So the idea of holiness itself is still—not a question, but they found out it is impossible to give an interpretation to it. It is like there is no way to catch it. If it is on the surface, it may be easy to pick it up. But it is so bottomless, and it is too deep to reach. But still, we know it. We should acknowledge it, but it is impossible to take it up.

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.