Quote from Seeds for a Boundless Life

Seeds for a Boundless Life: Zen Teachings from the Heart

by ZenKei Blanche Hartman

Shambhala Publications, Boston, Massachusetts    © 2015     192 pp.  

"Beginner's mind is Zen practice in action. It is the mind that is innocent of preconceptions and expectations, judgments and prejudices. Beginner's mind is just present to explore and observe and see 'things as they are.' I think of beginner's mind as the mind that faces life like a small child, full of curiosity and wonder and amazement. 'I wonder that this is? I wonder what that is? I wonder what this means?' Without approaching things with a fixed point of view or a prior judgment, just asking 'What is it?'

I was having lunch with Indigo, a small child at City Center. 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 -- just 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. You and I would see it and say, 'It's a spoon. It sits there and you use it for soup.' It doesn't have all the possibilities that he finds in it.

Watching Indigo, you can see the innocence of 'What is it?'

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't know about you, but I have a hard time doing that. I have a lot of habits of mind -- I think most of us do. Children begin to lose that innocent quality after a while, and soon they want to be 'the one who knows.'

We all want to be the who knows. . . "  (p. 3)


-- submitted by Jennifer Knight

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