True Enlightenment | Suzuki Roshi

Narrated by: Jack Kornfield

transcript:
“If you have, especially in your seven-days practice, having some taste of real practice, without losing the taste of practice, and continue your busy activity, then that will be great encouragement.

Even though you are [it is] difficult, and even though you are busy, you have always, you know, taste of calmness of your mind, not because you stick to it but because you enjoy it.

There is some difference [between] “to stick to it” and “to enjoy it.”

When you enjoy it, you don’t have to stick to it, you know. So if you have real, you know, taste of our practice, you can enjoy it all the time, incessantly.

Whatever you do, that taste is not something you have to stick to it, something you have to recall it. That is, you know, true enlightenment. But even though you think you attained enlightenment, you know, when you are busy, when you are some– in some difficulty, and you think you need, you know, to have that experience again, that is not real enlightenment because that enlightenment is something you have to stick to it.

But real enlightenment is always with you, and [there is] no need for you to stick to or for– there is no need even to think about it. It is always with you.

So difficulty itself is enlightenment. Busy life itself is enlightened activity. That is true enlightenment.”

The Seven Factors of Enlightenment by Jack Kornfield