The purpose of studying Buddhism is not to study Buddhism, but to study ourselves. It is impossible to study ourselves without some teaching. Because it is impossible to know what water is, we want science, and scientists want a laboratory, so they may study water. It is possible to know what elements water has, and when wind comes what kind of form water takes, and how it always comes down, but it is impossible to know water itself. It is same thing with ourselves. It is impossible to know what “I” is. That is why we have teaching.
—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 65-09-09 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.
