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Monday, August 17, 2026

Do Not Sell Liquor

“Do not sell liquor,” or, you may say, “drugs.” Liquor means some intoxicating medicine or intoxicating teaching. Those are liquor. Even Buddha’s teaching, if you sell it, that is liquor. If you are caught by it, that is liquor. So, not only wine or drugs, but also you should not sell anything [laughs]. Do you understand? It should be your life in its true sense. This is a very important precept for us, and subtle understanding is necessary.

cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-01-21-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.