Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘The most important thing to do for others is not to– is not to build something beautiful for others or to help them in some materialistic way or formal way, but to help others by giving true spirit of how to live in this world and true understanding of our life.

If we have true spirit of– true spirit to live in this world, there is no problem. But because of our superficial understanding of life, we have many problems and suffering. Of course, as long as we live or as long as we have this body, it is not possible to get out of suffering. So the point is how to change our suffering into joy of life– true joy of life. This is how to help others. Without this point we cannot help others in its true sense. If you have this understanding, whatever you do– alms giving, or kind words, or loving words– will work. And this is why we practice zazen too. So zazen is not some particular practice to attain something for ourselves, but [it is] to have true understanding of life and true spirit of– to acquire true spirit of life.

So we have to practice zazen just to practice zazen, as we live in this world without any particular reason why we live in this world. But if we understand that each one of us is a tentative form of the absolute being, and whatever we do is the activity of the absolute being which is not possible to be known by us completely, but something which we cannot doubt its existence. It exist but we do not know what it is completely. And this is the origin of our life or source of life. And it is also the life to which we resume after cessation of our activity. If there is something which we should believe in, this kind of absolute unknown being is the only one. There are many names– we call it by many names, but the “unknown absolute being” is one.’ (from the Suzuki Roshi Archive)

We looked at this talk last week at the Monday study group; the date of the talk (April 1967) places it right at the time when Zen Center students were starting to go down to Tassajara to prepare it for its official opening a couple of months later, and this is the generous bodhisattva spirit that he refers to elsewhere in the talk. But there was a lot more to the talk than that, and I will post another passage next week.