Today I want to write about the book "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki. This book gives me some profound insight into our life every time I read this book. In this book, the author Shunryu Suzuki tries to help readers understand the wisdom of Dōgen Zenji, who was a Japanese Buddhist priest, writer, poet, philosopher, and founder of the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan by using plain texts and examples. I'm an atheist as almost all modern Japanese people. But I believe this book gives you valuable insight into your life without regard to your religion. So let's get started.
Beginner's Mind
In the first chapter, "Beginner's Mind" of this book, he tells us the goal of Zen. And he says like this.
"In Japan we have the phrase shoshin, which means "beginner's mind." The goal of practice is always to keep our beginner's mind. "
As he says, the goal of Zen practice is always to keep our beginner's mind. But why is the beginner's mind important? He implies the answer by these passages.
"For Zen students the most important thing is not to be dualistic. Our "original mind" includes everything within itself. It is always rich and sufficient within itself. You should not lose your self-sufficient state of mind. This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few."
What did you feel about these lines? I'm calm and feel happiness. That's because these lines tell us that our original mind already have everything. We are likely to try to find what is missing. But we have everything in my mind because there are many possibilities. Indeed I think it's worth being an expert. We try to become experts in particular fields or areas. And we become experts at last. But then we might find that we've lost the joy we felt when we're beginners. I've experienced these in various aspects. So I think it's essential to try to keep my beginner's mind. If I forget the beginner's mind, I'll lose the joy of making music, listening to music, and loving my irreplaceable person. So I love this way of thinking of Zen.
Mind Weeds
In the chapter "Mind Weeds" of this book, he tells us the importance of weeds we have in our minds. In our life, there are a lot of weeds in our minds. Some of them might make you feel low. How will you deal with them? He writes like this.
"You should rather be grateful for the weeds, because eventually they will enrich your practice. If you have some experience of how the weeds in your mind change into mental nourishment, your practice will make remarkable progress. You will feel the progress. You will feel how they change into self-nourishment.—We must have the actual experience of how our weeds change into nourishment. "
I think these passages are important when we think about our way of living. This way of thinking might look like the way of thinking in the article "The way to deal with failures that Walt Disney tells" I've wrote before. If you think the weeds as just weeds, they might be only weeds. But if you consider them as your mental nourishment, they will add depth to your life.
Today I put the pen here. Soon I'll write about other parts of this book I haven't written yet. Thanks for your reading. And I hope you'll enjoy this post. Feel free to leave me a comment.
