Shunryu Suzuki was a Zen Master who popularized Zen Buddhism in the US, specially around San Francisco. In the ’70s a student of his recorded his Zen talks and made it into the popular book Zen Minds, Beginner’s Mind. When I dabbled in Zen Buddhism I learned about meditation from this book, specifically breathing techniques and correct posture. Ultimately his anecdotes reveal that to truly know ourselves is to be truly enlightened, a revelation that I still struggle with (a blog post about this is coming up sometime).
This is an except from one of my favorite books, Zen is Right Here: Teaching Stories and Anecdotes of Shunryu Suzuki, a book that I picked up when I was feeling down one day while browsing through Border’s and just needed to have. These are collection of anecdotes that the author has collected from former students of Shunryu Suzuki and how he touched many lives. Anyways,this excerpt really touched me and whenever I am feeling down I always turn to page 118 and read the following:
Suzuki Roshi has been quite ill. He had been falsely diagnosed with infectious hepatitis and had gone to the hospital for more tests. I went to visit him just as his lunch was served.
He motioned to come and sit next to him at the edge of the bed. As I crossed the room he mouthed the words “I have cancer.” When I sat next to him he leaned over and took a bit of food on his fork and put it into my mouth. “Now we can eat off the same plate again.” He said it as if the new diagnosis were some big gift.
Some day I wish to be that selfless with those that I love.
The Now We Can Eat Off the Same Plate Again by Hits Snooze Twice, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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