Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘All of us have some small or big enlightenment, and in your zazen you may think about it again. But if you try to think about it, you will be lost, you will be lost. I know. I myself was lost, so I think you will be lost too, because you are involved in an intellectual, cerebral way of thinking. And once you lose yourself, you start to torture yourself, you don’t feel so good. That anxiety, that impatient, angry feeling will continue, and your practice will become worse and worse. That is what will happen to you.

But if someone calls your name, “Where is Katsuzen?” all of a sudden, your practice will come back to you. You see? Emptiness is here, right here. Do you understand? So Zuigan had to call himself, because he would be lost if he didn’t. Incessantly you should call your name. When you come back to yourself, there you include everything as a sole being in the time-bound and space-bound. And you will feel very good, you know.

This kind of practice, addressing someone in this way, is the kindest instruction to give. No one can be more kind to someone than this. Don’t you think so?’ (from the Suzuki Roshi Archive)

This is from the talk we have been studying, given at the end of the first sesshin at Tassajara. Having already discussed how his students might have had new experiences and not known how to handle them, and cautioned them not to view sesshin or even the practice period as anything special, Suzuki Roshi admonishes them even more, and – quite unusually – refers to his own experience.