-- *Mar*Beautiful choice. DT Suzuki is a perfect mirror for the questions you’re asking. I’ll write this as a *philosophical conversation*, calm, probing, occasionally paradoxical—very much in his spirit. I’ll let *you* sound like yourself, and Suzuki like Suzuki, without imitation turning into caricature. ------------------------------
*A Conversation Between Me and D. T. Suzuki* *Me:* Dr. Suzuki, I feel that modern humans have lost the capacity to know truth. Words interfere. Machines interfere. Even thinking interferes. Is truth still possible for us? *Suzuki:* Truth has not gone anywhere. Only your way of looking has become noisy. When a pond is stirred, the moon disappears—not because the moon has left, but because the water will not rest. *Me:* But language dominates everything now. We define, qualify, argue, and defend. Even when we want to tell the truth, we drown in words. *Suzuki:* Zen has never trusted words. Words point, but people mistake the finger for the moon. Truth is not spoken; it is *recognized*. The moment you say “this is truth,” you have already stepped away from it. *Me:* That is exactly my anguish. Animals seem closer to truth than humans. They do not lie. They breathe, feel, and respond. Humans manipulate. *Suzuki:* Animals live *before* reflection. Humans live *after* reflection. Reflection is not a sin—but attachment to it is. When reflection forgets its source, it becomes falsehood. *Me:* Modern humans trust machines more than their own bodies. We block our feet from the earth, our hands from soil, our breath from awareness. We no longer feel the planet. *Suzuki:* Zen monks walk barefoot not to imitate poverty, but to remember gravity. The body is not an obstacle to enlightenment—it is the gate. When the body is ignored, the mind becomes arrogant. *Me:* Science tells us feelings are bias. Emotion is treated as contamination of truth. *Suzuki:* That is a misunderstanding of both feeling and truth. Zen does not say “feel more” or “think less.” It says: *do not divide*. Feeling and knowing arise together when the mind is whole. Bias comes from attachment, not from feeling. *Me:* Descartes divided mind and body. Ever since, humanity has been cutting itself in half. *Suzuki:* Yes. Zen never accepted that surgery. When you divide thinker and thought, observer and observed, you create a world that must be controlled rather than understood. Control always leads to violence—first subtle, then obvious. *Me:* This violence now extends to the biosphere. We treat nature as livestock for economics. *Suzuki:* When you forget that you *are* nature, exploitation feels logical. In Zen we say: mountains walk, rivers speak. This is not poetry—it is perception before concepts intervene. *Me:* Universities have mechanized education. Everything is measured, optimized, standardized. But wisdom seems to evaporate. *Suzuki:* Education that does not transform the person is mere training. Training produces skill; education produces vision. Zen training looks severe, but its purpose is to *remove* machinery from the mind. *Me:* So mechanization and real education are opposites? *Suzuki:* They move in opposite directions. Mechanization multiplies means; education clarifies ends. When means forget ends, civilization becomes efficient—and empty. *Me:* Humans are trapped between fight and flight. Animals choose instantly. Humans hesitate, calculate, fear shame. *Suzuki:* Shame is the shadow of self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is not wrong—but it must dissolve in action. In Zen archery, the archer does not decide to release the arrow. Release happens. *Me:* Is courage then a natural state? *Suzuki:* Courage appears when the self is forgotten. Fear appears when the self is protected. Breathing deeply is already a lesson in courage—you inhale life without guarantee, and you exhale without possession. *Me:* People think we need spaceships to understand the universe. *Suzuki:* The universe is not far away. Distance is a mental invention. When the mind is silent, there is no “here” and “there.” That is why Zen monks sit facing a wall—and discover infinity. *Me:* So meditation is a form of education? *Suzuki:* Meditation is *unlearning*. You unlearn haste, ambition, identity, and certainty. What remains is not ignorance, but intimacy. *Me:* Could universities replace laboratories with free nature spaces? *Suzuki:* They would produce fewer papers—and more humans. Whether society is ready for that is another question. *Me:* Then truth is not something we construct, but something we stop interfering with? *Suzuki:* Exactly. Truth is what remains when you stop lying to yourself—not verbally, but existentially. *Me:* And falsehood? *Suzuki:* Falsehood is effortful. Truth is effortless. That is why it frightens people who depend on control. *Me:* So the path forward is not progress, but remembrance? *Suzuki:* Zen never speaks of going forward or backward. It speaks of *waking up*. When you wake up, the world is exactly where it has always been. *Me:* Thank you, Suzuki. *Suzuki:* Do not thank me. Go breathe. The rest will follow. ------------------------------ If you want, I can: - Make this *more confrontational* - Turn it into a *Zen koan-style exchange* - Or write it as a *walk through a forest*, with silence as a third speaker -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/CACDCHCKACFRP0JG9JbN%2BD2SVSDwh4k5D9unYbkvN5jC74650-A%40mail.gmail.com.
