"Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind"

 

"In the beginner's mind there are
are many possibilities; in the
expert's mind there are few."

I initially heard about "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" on a podcast I listened to a while back. The book sounded kind of interesting, but I promptly forgot about it until this year, when a book club I follow added it to their list. I'm glad I participated – it turns out that virtual book club discussions on Zen Buddhism attract really interesting people. But first, the book.

"Zen Mind" was written by Shunryu Suzuki, a Zen Buddhist monk who popularized the religion in the United States. After moving from Japan to California, he founded the San Francisco Zen Center and taught there for the rest of his life. "Zen Mind" consists of several dozen of the talks he gave, transcribed and lightly edited by his students.

The first set of talks focus on the practice of Zen and meditation, the second on the proper attitudes a practitioner should hold, and the third on spiritual understanding. I found the first two sections very readable and highly quotable, but the third was more difficult. Several passages that struck me follow.

The importance of self-awareness:

When we have our body and mind in order, everything else will exist in the right place, in the right way. But usually, without being aware of it, we try to change something other than ourselves, we try to order things outside us. But it is impossible to organize things if you yourself are not in order. (10)

The profound and mundane are in the eye of the beholder:

When I was at Eiheiji monastery in Japan, everyone was just doing what he should do. That is all. It is the same as waking up in the morning; we have to get up. At Eiheiji monastery, when we had to sit, we sat; when we had to bow to Buddha, we bowed to Buddha. That is all. And when we were practicing, we did not feel anything special. We did not even feel that we were leading a monastic life. For us, the monastic life was the usual life, and the people who came from the city were unusual people. When we saw them we felt, "Oh, some unusual people have come!"

But once I had left Eiheiji and been away for some time, coming back was different. I heard the various sounds of practice—the bells and the monks reciting the sutra—and I had a deep feeling. There were tears flowing out of my eyes, nose, and mouth! It is the people who are outside of the monastery who feel its atmosphere. Those who are practicing actually do not feel anything. I think this is true for everything. When we hear the sound of the pine trees on a windy day, perhaps the wind is just blowing, and the pine tree is just standing in the wind. That is all that they are doing. But the people who listen to the wind in the tree will write a poem, or will feel something unusual. That is, I think, the way everything is. (65)

This too shall pass:

Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transiency, we suffer. So the cause of suffering is our non-acceptance of this truth. The teaching of the cause of suffering and the teaching that everything changes are thus two sides of one coin. But subjectively, transiency is the cause of our suffering. Objectively this teaching is simply the basic truth that everything changes. (91)

I'm glad I discussed this book with a group. About a dozen people called in, and half were either familiar with Buddhism or actual Zen practitioners. Some pretty interesting stories came out of the session. This was my favorite.

One of the readers, let's call him Bob, got interested in Eastern religion his senior year of college, and decided on a whim to travel to India. He initially planned to stay for a month or two, but through a string of chance encounters met a series of increasingly famous gurus and ultimately ended up in Tibet. As a native English speaker in Tibet, Bob got the attention of a young man who had been looking for a replacement so he could quit his job...as an English translator and assistant to the Dalai Lama. 

Of course, Bob took it. As one of the Dalai Lama's assistants, he saw a lot of people meet his holiness for the first time. This was a very profound moment for many of them, a rare chance to speak to him directly and ask questions and comprehend his teachings.

Bob remembered one man in particular, a German, perhaps in his late twenties, who had converted to Tibetan Buddhism but still struggled to find his place. What should he do now? Should he stay in Germany? Should he marry? What was his purpose in life? So he traveled to Tibet and lined up along with all the others waiting to meet the Dalai Lama, hoping to get some answers.

Upon reaching the front of the line, he approached the Dalai Lama and fell at his feet. "Sir, what should I do with my life?!"

The Dalai Lama thought for a moment, asked "What do you want to do with your life?" and burst into laughter.

Verdict: "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" is an approximately equal mix of interesting, thought-provoking, and abstruse, which is about what I wanted from a Buddhist book written for a Western audience. Recommended.