\u201cIn the beginner\u2019s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert\u2019s there are few.\u201d<\/p>\n
By Zenkei Blanche Hartman<\/a><\/p>\n Tricycle, January 6, 2022<\/p>\n Beginner\u2019s mind is Zen practice in action. It is the mind that is innocent of preconceptions and expectations, judgments and prejudices. Beginner\u2019s mind is just present to explore and observe and see \u201cthings as they are.\u201d I think of beginner\u2019s mind as the mind that faces life like a small child, full of curiosity and wonder and amazement. \u201cI wonder what this is? I wonder what that is? I wonder what this means?\u201d Without approaching things with a fixed point of view or a prior judgment, just asking \u201cWhat is it?\u201d<\/p>\n I was having lunch with Indigo, a small child, at City Center [a Soto Zen practice center in San Francisco]. He saw an object on the table and got very interested in it. He picked it up and started fooling with it: looking at it, putting it in his mouth, and banging on the table with it\u2014just engaging with it without any previous idea of what it was. For Indigo, it was just an interesting thing, and it was a delight to him to see what he could do with this thing. You and I would see it and say, \u201cIt\u2019s a spoon. It sits there and you use it for soup.\u201d It doesn\u2019t have all the possibilities that he finds in it.<\/p>\n Watching Indigo, you can see the innocence of \u201cWhat is it?\u201d<\/p>\n Can we look at our lives in such a way? Can we look at all of the aspects of our lives with this mind, just open to seeing what there is to see? I don\u2019t know about you, but I have a hard time doing that. I have a lot of habits of mind\u2014I think most of us do. Children begin to lose that innocent quality after a while, and soon they want to be \u201cthe one who knows.\u201d<\/p>\n We all want to be the one who knows. But if we decide we \u201cknow\u201d something, we are not open to other possibilities anymore. And that\u2019s a shame. We lose something very vital in our life when it\u2019s more important to us to be one who knows than it is to be awake to what\u2019s happening. We get disappointed because we expect one thing, and it doesn\u2019t happen quite like that. Or we think something ought to be like this, and it turns out different. Instead of saying, \u201cOh, isn\u2019t that interesting,\u201d we say, \u201cYuck, not what I thought it would be.\u201d Pity. The very nature of beginner\u2019s mind is not knowing in a certain way, not being an expert.<\/p>\n