July 29 1965 2nd Talk

　　Originally offered: July 29th, 1965 | Modified October 27th, 2009 by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

　　SR0047

　　Shunryū Suzuki-rōshi

　　SUMMER SESSHIN LECTURE: 1 PM

　　Thursday, July 29, 1965

　　Lecture B

　　Soko-ji Temple, San Francisco

　　Listen to this talk: Suzuki-roshi 65-07-29 2nd Talk

　　[Are there any][1] questions so far I talked

　　Student A: Why—why do we put our hands like this

　　 And then—is—is that the best—is that—why

　　 [Laughter.]

　　Suzuki-rōshi: This is called “cosmic mudrā.”

　　Student A: Called what

　　Suzuki-rōshi: Cosmic mudrā. One of the mudrā—Buddha”s mudrā. There are many and many mudrās. This is good question, I think. Have you some other question

　　 I will, you know—I will talk about it.

　　Student B: Once you know buddha-nature—does it—does it—do you always know it, or do you, like, you can forget you have it and have to remember it—that you have buddha-nature

　　Suzuki-rōshi: You do not, you know, understand what I said exactly. Yeah, I will explain it just now—then [

　　]. Some other question

　　Maybe better to explain your question, and then some more people will have some other question, I think. I think you are—you are trying to figure out what is buddha-nature. Is that so

　　 Because I do—did not explain what it is, but I just point it out: “This is buddha-nature.” But I didn”t say what it is. That is buddha-nature, you know. Something—buddha-nature is—it is impossible to understand psychological way or philosophical way or scientific way. In this—you cannot understand in this way.

　　So that is why we should know what is science, what is philosophy, what is some culture, science. You know, all—we should know all our mental functions or else you will say this is, you know, our religious mental function. You will say in this way. You will point out some of the mental function and say this is Buddha, this is fundamental function of our mind, you know. This is mistake. Do you understand

　　I—soon after the philosophers try to establish the authority of, you know, authority of human being [laughs], human nature, they tried to figure out what is our mental function. And all the culture should be established by ourselves, by our human nature. So they studied what is human nature and what is our function of our mind. Pursuit for truth, pursuit for morality, pursuit for beauty are—those three are our mental functions, you know. There is no other mental function beside those three. It is true.

　　Student C: Can you say those again

　　Suzuki-rōshi: Hmm

　　Student C: Can you say the mental functions again

　　Suzuki-rōshi: When they tried to establish, you know, their own culture, you know—our own culture, our human culture, humanism, you know, so-called-it humanism is to establish our authority. Before, you know, the—our civilization was in Dark Age, and your civilization is under the influence of Christianity, authority of Christianity. So scientific truth is not absolute truth for you. But after Dark Age you try—philosophers, at least, tried to establish human culture. To establish human culture, they have to figure out what is our function of mind—human being—human beings—mind of human being. Now you know they count three and there is no other function in our mind.

　　Pursuit for truth: that is science, pure science. Pursuit for good: that is ethics. Pursuit for beauty: that is aesthetic. That—those three—there is no other culture in human being. But they could not, you know, deny their tradition, Christian tradition, religious tradition. Then what is religious tradition

　　 What is religious function of our mind

　　 But those—religious function is supposed to be—the combination of the three is the religious mind function. When those three functions get together and work on something, that is religious…

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