REST ROOMS

Shunryu Suzuki, Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen, edited by Edward Espe Brown (New York: HarperOne, 2002) (From "The Zen of Going to the Rest Room": "Our culture is based on the idea of gaining or accumulating something. Science, for instance, is the accumulation of knowledge. I don't know that a modern scientist is greater than a scientist in the sixteenth century. The difference is that we have accumulated our scientific knowledge. That is a good point and at the same time dangerous. We are in danger of being buried under all our accumulated knowledge. It is like trying to survive without going to the rest room. We are already swimming in the pond of polluted water and air, and we talk about this pollution. At the same time we can hardly survive the pollution of our knowledge." "When you understand yourself better, you can just be yourself. . . . Fortunately or unfortunately, even though you don't like it, we need to go to the rest room, the stinky rest room. I am sorry, but I think we have to go to the rest room, as long as we live." Id. at 42, 43-46.).