‘I appreciate your enthusiasm in copying my lectures and keeping them, but remember that I speak them with shame and tears. I do such a dirty job (this talking on Zen) because nobody else has done it here before me. Please do not show my lectures to any outsiders and say they are part of my Zen. I have no such funny business as preaching Zen. Whatever I say passes away before you record it. You only catch my yawns and coughs.’ (Eloquent Silence)

What an old Buddha he is! I was reminded recently, as I was reading of his era, that his teacher told him not to breathe a word about Buddhism for seventeen years after he had arrived in America. And he obeyed his teacher. And then made up for it afterwards, despite the shabby treatment he received, along with the rest of the Japanese community, during the war.