“Don’t quote me on that.” How many times have we heard this statement or perhaps said it ourselves? Yet still it happens, all day, everyday, with every one of us. How many times do we say in conversation, “But he/she said…” or “It’s true. I read it.”
Yes, the person did say that. But so what? In that moment, place, mood, frame of mind, belief and value structure, and so on, it happened. That’s all. There’s really nothing more you can say about it.
What you do with that information, of course, is a whole other matter. In the 1960s, some students of Suzuki Roshi of San Francisco Zen Center loosely transcribed a number of his talks, many from notes or just plain memory, and collected them into what quickly became and still is the best-selling book ever in the West on Zen Buddhist practice, “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.” Is it good information? Yes. Did Suzuki approve of the book? Yes. Did he say those words? Most of them, in some form or another. Are these exact words his exact thoughts? Kinda sorta for the most part kinda. Do the vast majority of the millions who have read the book take it as the actual, firm essence of Suzuki’s philosophy and life’s work as well as an essential representation of Zen Buddhism? Yes.
Once you sign your name, people think they know who you are. People are going to make of things whatever they want to, and you have no control over it. Once you say something, it not only becomes the past and history but also fodder for the myths and imaginaries that individually and collectively accrete over time as a natural, ineluctable process.
But don’t quote me on that.
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