In Japanese we have the word “shibui” which means just common, not conspicuous, not colorful. It expresses a deep sense of taste. These ideas may have originated in Zen practice. This sense is important if you want to maintain a tradition or culture. To develop this sense in Zen is called accumulating unknown virtue or unknown merit. It is to do something which nobody notices. It is to do something fundamental, to devote ourselves to fundamental work.
Photo by Don Farber in Tricycle magazine
—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 65-08-28-A 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.
