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Your absence is an absolute necessity for enlightenment to happen.
Suzuki is absolutely right: "The reason I do not talk about satori is because I have never had it." I am absolutely certain that those who heard him are bound to have thought that he had had no experience of satori. That is simply the meaning of what he is saying. Unless there was somebody who had experienced egolessness, and finally selflessness, Suzuki was without fail, bound to be misunderstood.
But he was a man of immense daring, of great courage, to introduce Zen to the West. Not many people were impressed. Many certainly entertained Suzuki's statements, his anecdotes from the annals of Zen; they thought them strange jokes. But there were a few who understood not what the man was saying, but the man himself. He turned a few people on; he has the same distinction as Bodhidharma who planted the seeds of Zen in China.
Suzuki can be compared to Bodhidharma. He planted the seeds in the West, and Zen became, in the Western climate and mind, a new fashion. Suzuki was very much disturbed by it. He was not introducing a new fashion, he was introducing a new revolution and a new style of being. But the West understands things only in that way -- every two or three years a new fashion is needed; people become bored with the old.
And Suzuki was received with joy, because he had brought something which no Christian or Jew was even able to comprehend. He attracted many people of the new generation; a few of them remained true to the master to the very end. Many traveled to Japan just because of Suzuki. Hundreds of Zen classics were translated in Western languages because of Suzuki. Now it is possible to talk about Zen and still be understood, and the whole credit goes to a single man, Shunryo Suzuki.
It has never to be forgotten that words don't exist without context. If you forget the context, whatever you will understand is going to be wrong. If you understand the context, it is impossible to misunderstand.
Berkowitz was crossing Washington Avenue on Miami Beach when he was hit by a passing auto. Several passersby picked him up and laid him down on a bench. A kindly,
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