In Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, I encountered some frustration and confusion while attempting to decipher what Suzuki was saying to me. In part two, the section titled “Study Yourself”, I found to be one of the most confusing parts of the book. In this section Suzuki explains that while trying to study yourself, we need a teacher to show us how to study ourselves. However, he then says that you can not take what you have learned from a teacher and use this to study yourself. I understand that the student must understand themselves, but I do not understand why a student can not take ideas from someone else and use them in their own studies of himself. Personally, if I were a student who is attempting to find myself, I may want
