One morning at the end of zazen, Suzuki spoke to the students still facing the wall, repeating an old theme with a new twist: “When you hear the wake-up bell, you should jump out of bed right away. You shouldn’t lie there. Otherwise, how can you ever face death, which always comes suddenly? But don’t jump out of bed the way I did this morning. I knocked over my kerosene lamp.”

Shunryu Suzuki

from the book Zen Is Right Now: More Teaching Stories and Anecdotes of Shunryu Suzuki

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