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Tuesday, June 23, 2026

Pairs of Opposites

The Sixth Patriarch emphasized pairs of opposites. He pointed out thirty-six pairs of opposites: heaven and earth, good and bad, something like these. I think Nangaku’s understanding of the teaching is also based on pairs of duality. According to him, something good is at the same time something which is bad. Good and bad is one—two sides of one coin.

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cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 65-08-28-B 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.