Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘Purpose of our practice is to get accustomed to live without being attached to many things but this unknown being. When we find our meaning in this way– meaning of life in this way, naturally we can help with each other. We will love with each other without forcing anything to others, keeping a harmonious way between us, and between other beings– animate and inanimate beings. We are all friends.

So true love should be based on this understanding, or else your love will become– will be selfish love. True love should not be selfish. Actually there is no selfish love. It looks like selfish, but it is not– there is no such love as selfish love. Even though love is not selfish, but when you have the idea of selfish– self which is not real, the love will become blind love without any understanding. So before we talk about love, or before we love others, we should make this point clear, and we should have the direct experience of zazen which is beyond thinking. When you can sit, when you can just sit, you have [are] in the position to love others in its true sense.

But on the other hand, idea of self– we cannot feel anything without idea– without feeling of self. When we feel something, there that feeling is the feeling of self. But true [1 word] having feeling of self or feeling of love, you will feel at the same time the absolute unknown being which is the other side of the feeling of self. So it looks like same, but actually it is not the same. The one selfish feeling is just selfish feeling without any possibility of being free from it. The other is although we have same feeling we have freedom from it at the same time. This is the difference, and this is actually how we live in this world.’ (from the Suzuki Roshi Archive)

Another segment from the talk I highlighted last week.