** 10th book of 2020: I Can’t Handle the Truth **
- There’s no need to remember what I say, there’s no need to understand what I say *
That’s a good thing, as I absorbed this book about as much as goretex absorbs water. Thanks to having read other books on meditation (see https://www.goodreads.com/review/edit/25942786), a few pithy quotes landed:
** To study Buddhism is to study ourselves. To study ourselves is to forget ourselves. * ** Calmness is activity is true calmness. *
- The mind which is on your side is not just your mind, it is universal mind. It is not different than another’s mind, it is zen mind.
- To cook is not just to prepare for someone or for yourself; it is to express your sincerity. So when you cook you should express yourself in the activity in the kitchen. You should allow plenty of time; you should work on it with nothing in your mind, and without expecting anything. You should just cook!
Many statements seemed profound, but I’m still not precisely how to parse: ** Time goes from present to past. There we have poetry and we have human life. *
Suzuki delights in absolutes and paradoxes. Many of these just don’t make sense to me and I wonder if something was lost in translation. Sometimes the book felt like literary equivalent having somebody beating you in the head with a stick and then hope you learn a lesson through confusion. Think of this as more Luke in Episode 8 than Yoda in Episode 5. At other times I wondered if this is the Buddhist equivalent of drunk Sufi wisdom.
- Or else you will think the temporal expression is it. But this particular expression of it is not it. At the same time it is it. For a while it is it. For the smallest particle of time this is it. But it is not always so. And thus this is not it.