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Review of
Shunryu Suzuki, the teachings of, "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind." 
by @mjbanks 
for Diarrheal Anemic Liberal Economy 


I'd listened to the audiobook gazillions of times, and decided to give it a once-over, it's a book full of examinations of the pure practices involved in religion, the nameless religion, not the cults or the groups of angry mobs. It has a lot of truth that really helped me understand the world, not so much that the book matched something in me that I appreciated, but that it had a lot of truth to offer. The book is a collection of speeches that zen master Suzuki gave over the years that had been recorded in pieces, because going to hear a conservative lecture is by far not a new thing as much as it sadly has become a newly forgotten thing. Much are tales of events and traditions not unique to any one demographic, in that I mean, commonalities of goodly deeds that all can enjoy. For those of you wise to Buddhism know that zen, imho, is not the same as the 'Schools of Buddhism' cult, you probably know the book infamously. The teachings center on focus, practice, and ...well, centering oneself. Not an oppressive liturgy of guidelines it offers Suzuki's words complete without expectations. You can call it a self-help book, it is a book, it might help, I can only say that with it my understanding of my favorite tenets from the book, as I write this, are 'right practice' and 'dharma ridden' dharma being laxly translated as laws, and in turn has made be a better pseudo Catholic. If you're still lost, the bible teaches many of Buddha's teachings in a 'protestant' fashion (for lack of a better word) and Buddha is kinda like a Jesus, just without the same persecution. One of my favorite quotes from it is, "The teaching which is written on paper is not the true teaching," which sounds like the holy spirit now that I think  about it. Think "teach" the verb, not the noun, as in 'to teach" not 'a book'. Whatever it is, let it happen, selfless and ascetic (NOT AESTHETIC), I'm not making you read it, you're not making me not tell you about the book. It has some of the famous "Koans" or we might call them, 'deep questions', when I learned about free will, kinda, my review. There's one about a dog, apparently dogs didn't bark in the ancient world, and the question is, "do dogs have Buddha-nature?" or 'holy nature' and the answer is literally "Mu," or the teacher barks at the answer, and I thought to myself, 'does a dog have enlightenment?' and I answered myself, 'who cares, it's a fucking dog, that's what it really is,' be what you are, this is the right understanding.

It has a Twitter API "https://twitter.com/zenmind_"  @zenmind_