‘All the difficulties you have in zazen should not take place outside your mind. Your efforts should be kept within your mind. In other words you have to accept the difficulty as not being other than what you are. You should not try to make some tentative particular effort based on your small mind like, “my practice should be better.” My practice you say, but zazen is not your practice, it is Buddha’s practice. Your effort is based on big mind which cannot get out of. If your small self begins to act without the care of big mind, that is not Zen. What you do should be well taken care of by big mind. Our practice should be based on mind or original way-seeking mind which works on and on continuously.’ (from the Suzuki Roshi archives)
This would be wonderful advice for anyone sitting Rohatsu this week; it was given during a December sitting in 1965.
Shundo David Haye 