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Excerpts
from Shunryu Suzuki lectures - 2014-5
[laughs] = Suzuki laughs [laughter] = students laugh
Killing
Was just reading Brian Victoria's latest piece on Japanese Zen priests' enthusiastic encouragement of militarism and incredibly convoluted rationalizations of the precepts to justify killing people. Here are a couple of excerpts about the precept not to kill, showing the positive and negative sides to the precept. - DC
[Suzuki
is speaking on the] ten prohibitory precepts. “Do not kill.” Those rules
are not supposed to be manmade precepts like social rules, or customs, or
rules of some special countries. It is something more than that. It is not
manmade but based on the truth-- a universal truth of universe. Strictly
speaking, we cannot kill anything [laughs]. You think you can do it, but
it is impossible. When we realize this, we will not kill anything. We will
not try to kill anything because it is impossible. This is one way of
observing the precepts “Do not kill.” So “Do not kill” is not just a
matter of forcing something on others or formality observation. It is
something more than that. If you realize this fact, that you cannot kill
anything, then you will be free from dualistic activity of killing or not
killing. - from 66-01-21-A ******
Student C: Is it ever permissible to help others by killing? - from 65-07-30-C For more go to this entry on the Suzuki lecture archive found on Shunryu Suzuki dot com. - Edited by DC, posted 1-12-15 |