In this point there is no difference between the Japanese way of life and your way of life. In Japan a candle burns the same way as in America. Even though your candles are different from our candles [laughter]. We have enormous candles, but they burn the same way. When the fire is the same, there’s no difference, so there’s nothing new for us. We are studying what we know. Even though you know something, you don’t know [laughs] that you know it. That is all. So, you have to know in its true sense. When you know what you know, that is enlightenment.
Image generated by Google Gemini
—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 66-02-19-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.
