Shunryu Suzuki (say "shoon-ryoo soo-zoo-kee") once told a group of students that the whole secret of Soto Zen fits into two words in Japanese, three in English: not always so. He wasn't handing out a license to do whatever you want. He was pointing at how tightly we grip fixed rules and fixed pictures of ourselves, the plan that must go exactly this way, the person you've decided you are. Reality keeps declining to cooperate with those fixed pictures, and that refusal isn't a flaw in reality, it's just what's actually true. This teaching, given a few years before his death, later became the title of a whole book of his talks. This morning, name one thing you're expecting to go a certain way, the meeting, the commute, the conversation, and hold it loosely enough that "not always so" would come as information, not as a defeat.
The secret of Sōtō Zen is just two words: 'Not always so.' Oh—oh—three words [laughs, laughter] in English. In Japanese it is two words. 'Not always so.' This is the secret of the teaching.
Shunryu Suzuki, lecture, August 7, 1969