Shunryu Suzuki Quotes
Even though you try to put people under control, it is impossible. You cannot do it. The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in a wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large spacious meadow is the way to control him. So it is with people: first let them do what they want, and watch them. This is the best policy. To ignore them is not good. That is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them. The best one is to watch them, just to watch them, without trying to control them.
Suzuki, Shunryu. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Weatherhill, 1970, p. 31.
Burrhus Frederic Skinner. Skinner was speaking in a scientific, technical sense. No one is free, in the sense that he is not conditioned by his interaction with his environment and his society. However different cultures can condition its members to act independently from different forces in society and behave originally. Everyone is conditioned by his/her society; the conditioning methods are more or less coercive. Those that use negative reinforcers tend to be tyrannical, cruel and inhumane. Those that use positive reinforcers tend to be what we call free,
Shunryu Suzuki (May 18, 1904 – December 4, 1971) was a Sōtō Zen monk and teacher who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United States, and is renowned for founding the first Zen Buddhist monastery outside Asia (Tassajara Zen Mountain Center). Suzuki founded San Francisco Zen Center which, along with its affiliate temples, comprises one of the most influential Zen organizations in the United States. A book of his teachings, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, is one of the most popular books on Zen and Buddhism in the West.
