When I was young, I wanted to remain in celibacy. I didn’t want to get married because I knew what would happen to me if I got married. So, I thought I’m not so good. I thought it may be easier to remain alone—to be a Buddhist. That was the easy way. But some people may think to remain Buddhist getting married may be easier because his wife will help him [laughs]. So, it may be easier. Yes, in some ways it is easier, but it makes it more difficult to be a good priest.
—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.
