Beginner's mind

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few." Shunryu Suzuki said that in San Francisco in the 1960s, and it became the title of a small book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, that has probably introduced more Westerners to sitting still than any other.

Zen came West through two men with the same surname and no relation. D. T. Suzuki was a scholar who wrote and lectured in English from the 1920s and made Zen intellectually respectable in America. Shunryu Suzuki was a priest who arrived in 1959, found a room full of young Americans wanting to sit, and sat with them. He founded the San Francisco Zen Center and taught until he died. The practice he taught is zazen: sit, upright, and attend. To the breath, to the posture, to whatever arrives, without chasing or pushing away. That's all. There is no technique to master, which is exactly what makes it hard.

The koan tradition, the unanswerable questions, is the other door, and it's a door we point to. A teacher is required.

The key for this month is beginner's mind, and it's the most useful idea I know for anyone who's been good at something for a long time. The expert sees what they expect. The beginner sees what's there. Sixty-three days in, you've gotten good at this. You know how the walk goes, how the log goes. That's the moment to start again, as if you'd never done it.

Zen is also the place where everything this month has been pointing finally gets stripped down. No sentence to hold, no person to wish well, no steps. Just attention, on the breath, now. That's the gate of Awareness with nothing on it.