Alan, if you let me know when there's about 15 minutes left, that'd be great. The topic of this talk comes from this book, which most of us are familiar with, Zen Mind and Beginner's Mind, a series of talks by Suzuki Roshin. And actually, the topic is, I think, maybe the second half of the title, Beginner's Mind. The reason I'm intrigued with this idea, this concept of beginner's mind, and this teaching, is that it's spoken of quite a lot. We've talked about it a lot at Zen Center. Of course, being the title of Suzuki Roshan's book, that would be expected, but in the book there's a beginning, opening paragraph or a page or two in which Suzuki Roshan discusses this and that's it.

[01:14]

And when I thought about where this idea might also occur, where else it might occur in I couldn't think of anything. I asked Michael Wenger and he sent me a fascicle of Dogen. He was helping translate it. I couldn't find it for this morning unfortunately, but in it the topic comes up and Dogen poses the question, are there any of us who are not beginners in the practice of the way? So, because this is a large topic for us at Zen Center and also at the associated Zen groups, I think it's worthwhile continuing to explore it, particularly because there's so little said about it in Buddhist literature in general. I took the opportunity while I was in Mel's office to look in a glossary of Zen terms about this word.

[02:21]

I'll read just a couple of passages in Suzuki Goshi's book. The opening introductory sentence is, in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities but in the experts there are few. And he says later on, he says, in Japan we have a phrase, Shoshin, which means beginner's mind. The goal of the practice is always to keep your beginner's mind. Suppose you recite the Prajnaparamita Sutra only once. It might be a very good recitation, but what would happen if you recited it twice, three times, four times, four hundred times? And he goes on to say, later in the section. At the end he says, You should not say, I know what Zen is, or I have attained enlightenment.

[03:25]

This is also the real secret of the arts. Always be a beginner. Be very, very careful about this point. If you start to practice Zazen, you will begin to appreciate your beginner's mind. It is the secret of Zen practice." That's always a tantalizing statement. So I looked up this term, Shoshin, and discovering that, in fact, the phrase beginner's mind also encompasses the term Zen mind. It gave three, actually three different meanings. One was the first mind, you know, something really fresh, the first mind or beginner's mind. And the second meaning was correct and pure faith. And the third was sacred mind, the mind of the Buddhas or the mind of enlightened sages. So it's I think that's an interesting, though, way to illuminate how the title of this volume came to be in that it wasn't enough to say Beginner's Mind.

[04:41]

It had to kind of show that that phrase actually encompasses a much bigger universe. The other thing I think is really important about the idea of Beginner's Mind, this teaching, is that it's... I think Suzuki Roshi was really... a mark of his genius was to be able to identify things in our culture to which he could then... would be a gateway for us understanding Buddhist teaching, and I think because on the surface it's extremely consistent with aspects of American culture of openness, of willing to try anything, of willing to, you know, being able to really screw up and then say, okay, I'm going to begin again.

[05:43]

Just the feeling, I think that I really don't appreciate the extent to which that we are allowed to begin again in our society, we are allowed to start over, we are allowed not to make irretrievable mistakes, and I think that and also because we are really beginning with Buddhism. I mean, when Suzuki Roshi was here, he had beginners who knew nothing about And that's since changed. There are a great many of us who have practiced for some time and have some experience, but as a culture we're really just beginning with it. In the Abhidharma, which is the body of literature developed in India following the Buddha's death in which

[06:48]

the monks were attempting to understand and explain everything about Buddhist teaching in enormous detail. They talk about three aspects of wisdom, prajna. In Sanskrit, the words are śrutamāya, cintamāya, and bhavanamāya, meaning one, hearing the teaching, reflecting upon it, and kind of getting an understanding of the meanings of the words. And third, being or manifesting the teaching in your body. So, in today's modern world, the Shruti Maya part is going really fast in some ways. You know, the modern communications is allowing the dissemination of a great deal of teaching, particularly in America, and it's coming from everywhere. I kind of wonder about the other phase, which I think is essentially what we're starting to get into now, which is the

[07:53]

understanding what the teaching means in that Well, it's complicated because not only are we, you know, here ourselves trying to understand a particular tradition of teaching, but it's also being, there's a sort of cross-current of conversations between different traditions of Buddhism which have never really talked to each other that much, or at least if they have, it's been a very slow process of, you know, one tradition kind of interacting and changing and moving to another culture. in the days when people moved on horses at best. So that side of things is starting to accelerate. And that's kind of what we're doing here, is we're listening and we're going to interact some, I hope, about this teaching. One of the The great things about Buddhist teachings is that we talk about it as being a great net of jewels, each facet reflecting all the others.

[09:13]

you know, a huge fabric. You pick up one thread and everything else comes with it. And I feel that the beginner's mind, in a sense, Suzuki Roshi is providing us this gateway in order to understand all the Buddhist teachings. So from the standpoint of this idea, we can see it as the source of all of Buddhist teaching. And you can look at things from that regard with any facet. of the Dharma. But it is, I feel, an essential aspect of our practice. And I think it expresses the natural It's a completely natural manifestation of mind and spirit that will occur when we yell out, when we sit quietly and hear with no ears and see with no eyes.

[10:37]

Now, Suzuki Roshi mentions that this is the secret of Zen, or something to that effect, and you kind of wonder why it's a secret. Why would anybody call it a secret? I mean, he just told us what it was, right? Well, it turns out it's a little bit elusive for a variety of reasons, mostly having to do with our human nature. And while we all appreciate the freshness and the vitality of our beginner's mind as we resume it. We also, you know, there's a problem in that we can come back to it again and resume it and we appreciate it, but you just can't get good at it. You know, we want to be masters of something, masters of Zen. We want to be good at what we do. And this desire to be good at things sometimes appears as sort of in the form of a kind of resistance to kind of resuming our natural way.

[11:59]

that we want to get on with attaining some kind of power or mastery, some way of feeling good about ourselves in that regard. You know, stay ahead of the game. You know, I want to be Right now, I'm struggling to be a good father to my teenagers. And, you know, I just, when I kind of just sort of say, you know, we've got to do it, you know, I say, you know, you can do this, but if you, and I expect such and such, and then if I get resistance and rudeness and anger and And I don't react. And I just say, well, this is the way it is. This is how I feel. And then I say, well, I think this is the way I'm supposed to do it, right? I just keep this up.

[13:02]

It's interesting at work. I answer the phone a lot. And, you know, like most work situations, it's a little bit, you know, you're kind of multitasking, there's lots going on. But I give myself now, maybe it's less than a second, I think, when I put my hand on the phone and get it up to my ear and when I respond to whoever's on the other end of the line. And I just want to, I just want that person to feel I'm here instead of going like that. Now maybe they're just frustrated and say, why isn't the guy saying hello? But taking that time to, you know, it gives, it's giving myself, you know, that experience in its entirety right from the beginning and giving the person on the other end

[14:09]

my full attention. We like to learn how to do these things, you know, these little... these abilities. And yet we also tend to identify with them. We tend to want to possess them. But they're really like our other possessions in a way. They're things we use and they certainly don't last forever. But if we take care of them, take care of our skills and manage them without beating them or trying to possess them, then we can then give ourselves the space to actually manifest beginner's mind in our everyday

[15:10]

everyday life. That's the problem in sitting practice. We can approach this and we can kind of work with it very directly. It's hard. It takes a long time, I think. It's certainly taken me a long time to even begin to think about how to resume beginner's mind in the midst of everyday activities and without getting completely thrown off, which happens occasionally, more than occasionally. And even sitting practice, You know, we develop some ability to get ourselves into a cross-legged position and stay there, even though it may be somewhat uncomfortable, learning how to relax and not react to our body if it's uncomfortable.

[16:19]

And we learn how to take this posture and to sit quietly in it and comfortably. A couple of years ago I did about a year of work, Alexander work, which some of you may know about. It's a technique of body work where Mr. Alexander developed on his own and has taught others since then, which works with very primary elements of your posture. mainly, you know, the beginning point is kind of the relationship between your neck and the back of your head, just what's happening back here, you know. Is this joint open or closed? Moving from there to, you know, how your whole body works, how you move.

[17:21]

And it completely turned upside down, my whole concept of how to sit in Zazen. And I had to kind of completely rethink how to approach that. And that was, it was extremely useful, but the, but again, it's, it's nice to be able to sit comfortably and move okay, but the, you still have to be able to just hear, you know, the birds outside and not have to rush for the next thing. Now I think there's some other issues about the practice of Beginner's Mind which are also interesting that kind of bridge into the area that we know as mostly as psychological work or, you know, the impulse to get good at something, to get so good at it, so you can do that like you're rolling off a log, you know.

[18:33]

you get better and better and pretty soon you don't even notice you're doing it. And then we get to this place where, you know, we get to ancient twisted karma. We get to patterns of behavior and response that are so ingrained that we don't know what we're doing really. And the question is then, How do we work with that? How do we become conscious of that? How do we get to the place where in a series of actions which are sort of automatic, how do you get to the place where you can actually make a choice? And that really depends on being able to see what's actually going on. And we're familiar with this idea and we work with it both in Zen practice and in psychotherapy. But then, so from the point of view of beginner's mind, getting to the place where you can make a choice about what you're doing, because instead of going boom, [...]

[19:51]

means that essentially this practice of beginner's mind is something you take directly into these really, say, unwholesome patterns. You know, an uncle of mine died last week and I realized that, again, that my own family stuff, The way I deal with emotional issues that are directly related to my family of birth has come to be generally sort of fogging out. Can I somehow get through this without feeling it? Just something about my growing up and the way my parents handled emotionality was that you know it just wasn't there you know so I had to kind of pretend it wasn't there and I had to figure out some way to behave or internalize that so that response so that it seemed normal to me and you know so I in my current family you know I've learned

[21:09]

gradually how to behave like a normal person or something, you know, to have feelings and express them. But when this stuff comes up about my family at birth, then of course, you know, it leads to all sorts of weird conflicts. So I suddenly realize, well, there's nothing going on with me, you know. getting into that, then sometimes I, you know, usually there's a big fight and, you know, okay, now I see there is something going on here. But there's a, and then later, you know, the pattern will start to kind of replicate itself again. And, oh, this time I can, allow myself to feel that discomfort and pain and I can still be present and I can still talk about what's happening and I don't have to kind of go into this isolated space. So there's that, but in a way the Resuming the beginner's mind in our distracted and unbalanced and compulsive states there allows you to say as a beginner, do I want to do this?

[22:37]

Do I want to take the next step? Or do I want to do something else? So this is kind of a key to kind of breaking those chains of of action that we sometimes feel so entrapped by. Then there's another category of sort of unconscious problems that I think is also where beginners' minds shed some light on them, which has to do with, you know, things and, you know, you know, some occurrence in the past where one, you felt deeply thwarted and you know, you just can't, you try to put that pain away and forget about it. And it keeps popping up in some weird way, of course. But, um, in a sense there's an incompleteness and incompleteness to something like, you know, I tried to point out to my mother something outside the window and, and, and she,

[23:41]

you know, yelled at me. And it was, you know, it was deeply disappointing. That kind of experience, which we all have, and which as a parent I now see, you know, I'm sort of continuing the tradition, you know, parents do the best they can, but they often are just trying to get through the day, and will take actions that, you know, seem ridiculous from the child's point of view. But coming back to that sense of incompleteness, you know, tragic incompleteness, and beginning again, beginning to In other words, instead of starting and then the next part of the pattern is, oh, I can't do that.

[24:43]

Oh, no, I got to go back here, is really just being able to, okay, we're going to choose to carry it through this time. You know, instead of, I know this is getting a little abstract, but the, what I mean to say is that We have to come, even in the most painful and difficult states, we have to accept them. In order to move through them, we have to accept them with this beginner's mind that here I am as a beginner, and where do I go from here? Not, oh, I recognize this, this is what I have to do here, because I've always done that. It's to take a fresh look, take a fresh look. So I wanted to just end my formal remarks by saying that I feel we owe Suzuki Roshi a great debt for bringing this piece of the teaching out and providing this giant sort of gateway for us to engage in Buddhist practice.

[26:04]

And I don't know, I'm sure I'm going to be kind of coming back to this again and again throughout the rest of my life. Anyway, I'm going to bow to him. And if there's anyone who wants to say anything at all, please do. Yes, Ross? Not being a parent myself, I feel it would be easier for me to have an effort directed toward beginner's mind and parenting, because I was a kid in my life. and your children are teenagers now, so you've been parenting for some years. How do you work with the concept of beginner's mind with parenting with actually having been a parent for 10, 12, however many years? Well, I think I'm just getting to that now. You know, some parents are extremely unskillful and have to learn an awful lot.

[27:09]

I'm in that category. But I think for those of us who are fortunate enough to kind of, you know, have the presence of mind to bring this practice into their daily life in that way, it opens up something, some difficult task, you know, enormous task like that. in a way that there are just more possibilities. It's really easy to get trapped. And children are really skillful at seeking out your weaknesses and trapping you. They're always testing you in that way to find out how this works. you know, they learn from you and then you learn back from them.

[28:17]

Can you give us an example? I just remember as a kid I wanted to show off to my mother that I could dive off a diving board, a flip or something, but I never asked her would she see, how was it or whatever. So now that I have a parent in front of me, I'm going to ask you how my dive was because you weren't correct. Yeah, it was beautiful. But maybe something where that whether your Buddhist practice informed your parenting versus just the parenting that one learns from Dr. Spock? Oh, yeah. I mean, I gave a brief example as I was talking about how to deal with conflict. You know, I have my own patterns about how I deal with conflict, which I have really had to kind of unlearn. And a beginner's mind is a great tool for unlearning your karmic patterns and finding a new way.

[29:19]

So when I tell my son that because he snuck out after he came home when he was supposed to, and then he went out with his friends until four in the morning, I said, well, you're just not going out anymore for a month. And that's it. And then the bargaining beginning and the protests and the anger and the slamming doors and so on and so forth. And being able to just sort of be there with that and like, oh, okay, I'm not going to react to that. you know, this is part of the process. This is part of, um, uh, just taking this one step at a time. It's not as though I had a firm idea that this, this consequence wasn't going to change. It's just that I was going to stay with each step of the way. Um, and, um, and allow him to do it, you know, allow him to have his place, allow me to have my place.

[30:29]

That's generally what I'm talking about. Yes, Alan? Well, I had an example of an experience of beginner's mind this morning. I did two things that I haven't... I've been doing two things that I don't... haven't done for a while. One was to be Dawn for the Bodhisattva ceremony, and the other was to be Saturday director. And something And I sat down and I realized, oh, is there anything different? And all of a sudden my mind was working. And because my mind was working, have to learn over and over again is that, say, when you're doing that ceremony, or when you're doing any, often any complex thing, when my mind starts thinking about something else, I'm not there.

[31:53]

And in this country, it's very real if your mind, when my mind starts thinking about, did I tell Peter about this, then I missed the bell. And it's like that's I've had to learn this I have to learn this over and over again, but you know it was a It was a kind of warm reminder of Just the kind of wily and slippery character of our mind You know even when you may generally know how to do something but If you have a busy mind, if you're distracted, if you're thinking of something, anything that you know may go out the window. Now this is a very low risk situation, missing the bell. Only a couple people noticed, I think.

[32:53]

It didn't have any implication. But it also has larger implications in our life about how we actually be present with what the task is and also make even more essentially how we climb back on when we make a mistake. When we make a mistake, it doesn't matter. And it was amusing to me and it was instructive because I got to see, right, my mind still works this way. And then just getting back with the right bell and the right timing so that Everybody can, people can not be confused about what they're supposed to do without any judgment. Yeah, likewise, whenever I come here, I notice that I do something wrong, you know. So as the bell was hitting in a certain way, I thought, was I supposed to bow then or something? You know, I wasn't even thinking about it.

[33:55]

I came into the zone of thinking, oh, I know how to do this. They'll give me a card. I can read it, you know. But then as this occurrence happened, then I felt, you know, I had to kind of figure out how to kind of turn that, you know, I think we were halfway through the homages before I sort of arrived at the ceremony again. And it's that kind of problem which is, Like you say, it's one thing to notice what's actually happening as you do it. And that's a pretty good place to be in, to be making a serious mistake or even a little mistake and notice that you're doing it. Then you're really on it. But when it happens and then the consequence starts to roll out, the ripples come out, and then next thing is, oh, and then, okay, where do we move from here?

[34:58]

Do we just, you know, can I just feel bad and let it go and come back? Or can I, do I need to do something right away? Do I need to, you know, there's this, my sister lived in Japan for a long time, and there's this category of gifts called omiyage, and there are stores that have nothing but omiyage in them, and the gifts are all wrapped. And what you were supposed to do when you make a mistake, a social error, is you immediately run out and get a gift off of somebody. And people have drawers full of this stuff in their house. They don't even have to go to the store. No, they don't even unwrap it. In fact, at my last garage sale, Ann had a whole bunch of this stuff. So the question, I mean, it's wonderful when there's something you can do like that, but that's not often the case. Sometimes you have to just sort of feel bad for a little bit. And if you can allow yourself to do that, fine, maybe that's the gift you have to make.

[36:03]

One small piece about this ceremony also, which most of you were here, when you said it wasn't until the homages that you got, I felt like I really got back on track. And then I realized, well, what about this, all my ancient twisted karma, you know? I hadn't been thinking about what the ceremony was about at all. So you had to go back and complete that. There'll be another chance. You can begin again, as we all will. way-seeking mind talks and talks like this, where people are parts of family, and they talk about I. I mean, you have a wife, and yet it sounds like you're talking as if you're the enforcer.

[37:20]

And it's not just you. I mean, I hear this often when people give their way-seeking mind Yeah, yeah. Right, right. So what would you hear if you heard somebody talking about it differently? Well, I don't know. I guess I... I mean, there are four people involved. Right, right. Right. I mean, I'm a grandmother now. Yeah, right. I can just speak.

[38:24]

You can watch it all come down. Sometimes. I still have an almost 21-year-old granddaughter. But... Well, I can understand that what you're looking for is a sense of the... of how a beginner's mind will, you know, what is the response there, but told as a story about a larger context about how these people interacted around the situation. For me, that kind of story, I mean, I would say that's something like a story about how it's very complex. You know, it's like at the dinner table where my son may be trying to annoy my daughter and my wife, Susan, will react strongly to him because that's actually more of an issue for her than it is for me.

[39:40]

But on the other hand, I'm someone who doesn't like to move into conflict directly. And so that, in fact, actually sets up a dynamic wherein we push ourselves into these sort of more extreme roles where she becomes the more active one in resolving an issue. But because that energy feeds into her kind of thing about conflict, about dealing with conflict with males, you know, rude teenage males, you know, like her older brother, you know, all that kind of stuff. And for me, you know, you know, I start to sink further and further into the background, you know, and then it sets a big conflict between two of us. And then at that point, but then also, you know, the daughter is feeling like, you know, there's nobody's defending her. She's got to, you know, start wailing away somebody. And so the whole thing, But on the other hand, when it comes to ordinary arguments, you know, my daughter and I are more allies than my wife and my son are allies.

[40:52]

You know, I don't know why I should talk about this, but it's interesting to see that, you know, that the complex relationship, complex and fast-moving events that take place in a very simple social situation like that. Well, simple, I don't know if it's simple, but it's... The only way to cope with it is to be open to something other than your natural response. There's no other way. is just leave some space there for a different way of dealing with this. And I appreciate you for bringing that up. Is it? Okay, thank you. Thank you.

[41:51]

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