Remarks at the Ceremony Officially Opening Beginner's Mind Temple

Shunryu Suzuki Transcript

Saturday, April 25, 19701
San Francisco

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Suzuki (speaking formally): On this day of the opening of Mahabodhisattva Zendo and main office of Zen Center, we arranged this altar, making offering of fruits and vegetables which were produced in this land of Mahabodhisattva, reciting sutra of Daihi-shin Dharani, the Sutra of the Great Compassionate One.

With this merit, we want to express our way-seeking mind with our deceased friend Trudy Dixon, Baiho Sesshin [1 word],2 and Zenkei Dosaku Koji, Soto Sanjo,3 and Chester F. Carlson, and all those who helped our activity by the spirit of Buddha or by various kinds of offering.

Hereby, we want to practice bodhisattva way step by step, so that our practice of step by step was paying back the mercy of Buddha and great bodhisattvas in India, China, and Japan.

Hereby, now, I have one statement which has been in my mind for more than ten years: Even on top of the mountain of great merit, we should try not --

[Tape recorder stopped!]

[Text below added from audio later on the same tape.]4

the sea of the spirit of great mercy is deep. We should not ignore a single drop of her? teaching [He screams]. [Bell] And all the people who helped the journey and continually making offering giving us encouragement and also ancestors of member of Sokoji and those ancestors of those who attained which we will put family and ancestors of all our members who want to continue to realize our Buddha way with all those persons... [Bell]
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Source: City Center tape first transcribed verbatim by Katharine Shields (6/19/00). Checked against tape by Bill Redican (9/28/00).

1 The tape on which this transcript was made was a compilation tape numbered SR-70-08-09. The original tapes appear to be SR-70-04-25-A and -B. The original tapes may contain the complete lectures, but they are afflicted with sound problems that must first be remedied.

2 Two Buddhist names were given to her at her lay ordination in 1967: Baiho Sesshin ("Fragrant Plum, Pure Mind").

3 Sanjō may mean "delegate" or "visitor": e.g., delegate from the Sōtō-shū (school) headquarters.

4 With this additional text all of the available audio of this lecture now labeled 70-04-25 has been transcribed.

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File name: 70-04-25: Remarks at the Ceremony Officially Opening Beginner's Mind Temple (Verbatim) from A n B ? See below. 2 footnotes added 1/11/2021. Changed Sister to Chester, pf, 2-23-2015. Last paragraph added 2-17-2016 by dc.

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