If you think that if you practice hard, you will attain enlightenment sooner [laughs], and if you are lazy in your practice, you will attain enlightenment later, this kind of understanding is the usual understanding of practice. But actual practice is when you practice zazen, the practice itself is enlightenment. Practice is not separated from enlightenment.
—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.