January 23rd, 1971
Saturday, January 23rd, 1971Shunryū Suzuki-rōshi
Saturday, January 23, 1971
San Francisco
Listen to this talk: Suzuki-roshi 71-01-23
Most of us, maybe, want to know what is self. This is a big problem. Why you have this problem, you know, and is—I want to understand [laughs] why you have this problem. I’m trying to understand. And even though, it seems to me, even though you try to understand who are you, it is, you know, it is endless trip, you know, and you will never see your self.
You say to sit without thinking too much is difficult. Just to sit is difficult. But more difficult thing will be to try to think about your self [laughs]. This is much more difficult. To do is maybe easy, you know, but to have some conclusion, you know, to it is almost impossible, and you will continue it until you become crazy [laughs, laughter]. That is, you know, when you don’t know what to do with your self. Or when you don’t know, when you find out it is impossible to know who you are, you know, you become crazy.
Moreover, your culture is based on the idea of self and science and Christianity [laughs]. So those element, you know, idea of Christianity or sinful idea of Christianity or, you know, idea of science, scientific-oriented mind, makes your confusion greater. You try to always, when you sit, you know, perhaps most of you sit to improve your zazen. That idea to improve, you know, is a very Christian-like, you know, idea and, at the same time, a scientific idea: to improve. You acknowledge some improvement of our culture or civilization. We understand our civilization, you know, improved a lot. But, you know, when we say “scientific” in sense of science, you know, or “improve” means before you went to Japan by ship, now you go to airplane or jumbo [laughs] plane. That is improvement.