Shunryu Suzuka Quotes on Philosophy
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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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Hell is not punishment. It's training.
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To accept some idea of truth without experiencing it is like a painting of a cake on paper which you cannot eat.
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My life has been one long series of mistakes.
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As soon as you see something, you already start to intellectualize it. As soon as you intellectualize something, it is no longer what you saw.