July 28 1965 2nd Talk

　　Originally offered: July 28th, 1965 | Modified October 27th, 2009 by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

　　SR0277

　　Shunryū Suzuki-rōshi

　　SUMMER 7-DAY SESSHIN LECTURE: 6 PM

　　Wednesday, July 28, 1965

　　Lecture D

　　Soko-ji Temple, San Francisco

　　Listen to this talk: Suzuki-roshi 65-07-28 2nd Talk

　　Tape operator: This is Reverend Suzuki”s six o”clock lecture on Wednesday.

　　Suzuki-rōshi: I cannot think of anything to talk [about] for this evening. So if you have some question please ask me, and I will talk about your question as an answer, and—and then we will have discussion. Do you have some—will you give me some subject to talk about

　　Student A: You spoke on—of a large patience and a small patience [laughs] and elaborated on the large patience but not on the small patience. Could you make that all clear

　　Suzuki-rōshi: Oooh. That is—you know, Reverend Katagiri”s name [

　　] is big patience. [Laughing, laughter ongoing.] So maybe better for him to explain, you know, what it is. And small patience. Okay.

　　Student A: I didn”t know about that. I thought that big patience was the—something to do with when—what the Buddha was [6-8 words unclear] patience. [Laughs.] And—but I think there”s probably a small amount of patience that is in the way of the other ideas that the passions are bogus [

　　]. And it occurs to me that if you”re too patient, then you—it [2-3 words unclear], you know

　　.

　　Suzuki-rōshi: It makes sense. [1 word.] I think so. Did you say big patient ["patience" here et seq.]—small patient is like even though you have physical suffering or—

　　Student A: I felt that was the large patience.

　　Suzuki-rōshi: —and mental suffering, to be patient is small patient. And big patient is something different from to be patient with your physical or mental distress or suffering. I think this makes sense, I think. That is small patient, or—but big patient is to be patient for not—for not knowing anything, or for not being—for not to achieve anything, you know. This is big patient. We want to achieve something in some visible way. And we want some result, and we want to utilize our religious way to—to help. When you are even—for—when your small patient [laughs] could not help you, even small patience does not help you. Do you understand what I want to say

　　You know, just to sit is big patient for [laughs] not achieving anything. Just sit. And to repeat same thing over and over again, day after day, just to repeat things over and over. We say even though Buddhism is impossible to attain, we should attain it. This is big patient, knowing that it is impossible. But we cannot help doing so with big patient. That is not even—that is not patient even. That is to do something because you cannot help doing so.

　　Even though sentient being is innumerable, we should save them all [laughs]. This is impossible, you know, because if the sentient beings are innumerable it is impossible to save them all. Isn”t that so

　　 Even though we know that, that it is impossible, but we cannot help trying to save them all. That is the absolute of what I called—inmost request, absolute request. Some—something—I don”t know—someone or who it is, but someone tells us to do so. And we hear that voice always, so I must—I cannot help doing so because someone telling me to do so or someone telling me, “please help me.” So we cannot help doing so, not because of “this is Buddhism” or not because of “this is big patient,” not because of what Buddha said. It is unconditional request for us. We have this kind of nature. If it is supreme teaching, absolute teaching, it is impossible to achieve. It is impossible to understand it. This is big patient, and this is not even the matter of big or small. It may be very small—sometime may be smalles…

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