beginner's mind
Rachel Elizabeth Maley (2016)
Of course, whatever we do is unusual, because our life itself is so unusual.
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
I've lived with the concept of beginner's mind since I was 19 years old, about to visit the San Francisco Zen Center for the first time, reading Shunryu Suzuki with all the skepticism of a 19-year-old rooting around in the vastness of Zen.
I say I've "lived with" beginner's mind because it's not as though I've been thinking about it consistently all this time; it's arisen and fallen like all things, coming back into present consciousness at exactly the moment I would benefit from relearning it.
Jon Kabat-Zinn describes it this way:
Too often we let our thinking and our beliefs about what we 'know' prevent us from seeing things as they really are. We tend to take the ordinary for granted and fail to grasp the extraordinariness of the ordinary. To see the richness of the present moment, we need to cultivate what has been called 'beginner's mind,' a mind that is willing to see everything as if for the first time…. Are you able to see the sky, the stars, the trees, the water, and the rocks as they are right now, with a clear and uncluttered mind? Or are you actually seeing them only through the veil of your own thoughts, opinions, and emotions?
In this way, beginner's mind is meditation. Beginner's mind is the opening up, the egoless humility, the ambitionless curiosity of approaching something for the first time, wholly unknowing, wholly receptive. This is meditation.
Meditation is not following a certain protocol, visualizing or concentrating or focusing on one thing. All of those tools are excellent training for mental fitness, but the practice of meditation is simply being: existing in this time and being aware of it.
Existing in this time: not using our thoughts to transport our consciousness to either the future or past
Being aware of it: noticing, without clinging, what is happening in each moment
"Existing in this time and being aware of it" means that we are not trying to force any moment to be anything other than what it is. We do not strong-arm ourselves into ignoring distractions, and we do not punish ourselves for letting our minds wander. When we exist in this time, we are simply aware of what's happening, and when we are aware of the arrival of thoughts and emotions in consciousness, we are also aware of their impermanence, and we are aware of their falling away.
Scott Schwenk said:
Much of what is taught publicly as meditation isn't yet meditation. It's concentration. It's focusing the mind, so mind training: concentrating on an object, a visualization, a mantra, the breath, or parts of the body or something else. We want to, if we're deepening meditation, practice letting go of all objects of focus, and sensing and letting go into the dynamic field of empty, full pulsation of consciousness happening throughout the entire cosmos. The entire cosmos is nothing more and nothing less than just energy doing things. That's it. Nothing means anything, and the nature of this space is completely empty. It has no meaning. In all directions it's empty, it's luminous, it's unconstructed and can be aware of itself.
How beautiful, then, to approach this practice like a beginner, or a child, experiencing for the first time the pulsation of their own being. Even the rhythm of our hearts beating is something like a miracle. How unusual that we find ourselves in these bodies and these lives. What would our lives be like if we were amazed, curious, dazzled by each moment? It is easy. Let it be easy.
This is one in a series of reflections on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s seven attitudes of mindfulness: non-judging, patience, beginner’s mind, trust, non-striving, acceptance, and letting go (published in Full Catastrophe Living, Bantam/Random House 1990, 2013). Quotations are excerpted from Full Catastrophe Living.
