Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘As your teacher, I am trying to help you in various way, but at the same time I know I cannot help you [laughs]. But as a disciple and teacher, this kind of effort should be always continuing. That is why I am trying pretty hard with other students. I appreciate your effort and the way of working on your own problem too. This is very much true with everybody, but we should make more effort to know how to work on ourselves, how to help ourselves, how to take care of our practice. This is the most important point. So let’s– let’s have– let’s do more effort on this point. Each one of you are making pretty good effort on this point, but not enough in comparison to the– to our teachers and masters who attained perfect enlightenment.’ (from the Suzuki Roshi archive)

This is a classic example of how the teacher tailors the message to the audience: speaking to students at Tassajara, a year after it was founded, Suzuki Roshi could be a little tougher than he would have been in the city or in Los Altos.