June 22nd, 1969
Sunday, June 22nd, 1969Shunryū Suzuki-rōshi
Sunday, June 22, 1969
San Francisco
Listen to this talk: Suzuki-roshi 69-06-22
Dōgen-zenji says: “Everything is encourages us to attain enlightenment. Mountains and rivers, earth and sky: everything is encouraging us to attain enlightenment.” So, of course, a purpose of lecture is to encourage—to encourage you attaining enlightenment. So we call our lecture, you know, teishō. Teishō means “with teaching—with kōan,” to help people to attain enlightenment.
And usual lecture—sometime to explain the context of teaching—like to explain philosophy—to understand our teaching in philosophical way is more a “lecture”—a kōwa.[1] Kōwa is more philosophical. And purpose of to listen to kōwa is to have intellectual understanding of the teaching. While teishō is to encourage students to attain enlightenment, or to have perfect understanding of—to have real experience of—to have real Buddhist experience.
So same thing will be subj- [partial word]—topic of our everyday life in its ordinal [ordinary?] sense. And same thing will be kōan [definitely said “kōan” here] to encourage—to encourage us to attain, to have direct experience of our life. Even though you think you are studying Buddhism, actually, you are, when you are just reading, you know [laughs]—it is—it may be—it may not be true or it will not help to have direct experience of Buddhism but just intellectual understanding of it.