“You may say you attained some stage in your practice. But that is just a trivial event in your long life.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

"Three Lecture Excerpts from Shunryu Suzuki Roshi" http://www.berkeleyzencenter.org/Lectures/may2000.shtml in Newsletter (May 2000) <br class="br">Context: You may say you attained some stage in your practice. But that is just a trivial event in your long life. It is like saying the ocean is round, or like a jewel, or palace. For a hungry ghost the ocean is a pool of blood; for a dragon the ocean is a palace; for a fish it is his house; for a human being it is water. There must be various understandings. When the ocean is a palace, it is a palace. You cannot say it is not a palace. For a dragon it is actually a palace. If you laugh at a fish who says it is a palace, Buddha will laugh at you who say it is two o'clock, three o'clock. It is the same thing.

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Japanese Buddhist missionary 1904–1971

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