Beginner's Mind

The first level of The Courageous Year ended on Friday, and today that first group is heading off to Level 2 and a new group of people are coming in at Level 1. With the first group I am witness to this sense of camaraderie, a shared experience together. And with this second group, I am reminding myself to sink back into beginner’s mind, to remember what it feels like to be starting something.

A few years ago, I studied Zen Buddhism. I see my transition/timeline into my current infatuation with all things new age and white light and positive thinking combined with a good dose of practicality to be something like this:

experimented with manifesting while using the book A Wish Can Change Your Life and received an apartment, job, and life partner (in that order) + stumbled upon Zen center while out for a random drive + fell in love with the stillness of a zendo + began meditating + got foot injury that defied logic + started looking into alternative healing + met my coach, Matthew + began working with Challenge Day + hung out with a spiritual group that had a rocking meditation practice + decided the group, while ultimately harmless, was probably a cult, and then pulled away but as they say in 12-step circles, “Take what you like, leave the rest,” and I did + went back to doing work with Challenge Day + went to live in Italy for the summer and in the semi-darkness of my room, spent 6 weeks birthing something that would take me from simply practicing what I’d been invited to practice in the pursuit of living my vision, to actually living my vision and really, really liking what I saw.

But back to Zen Buddhism. Beginner’s mind is something that is mentioned a lot in Zen, mostly because of Suzuki Roshi’s book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (I really like this talk, too). It’s about a quality of being open, of not coming into any new situation from a fixed point of saying, “This is the way this will be, because this is the way that other thing was.” It’s about not developing pre-conceived notions of anything. For instance, back when I was studying Zen seriously, if I mentioned to someone that I was undertaking that study, they sometimes assumed that this meant that I meditated every day, that I was full of compassion and non-judgement. (Confession: I’m certainly not complaining that these were the assumptions! I mean, an assumption that I’m really chill all of the time and nice? Sounds great to me!). ;) Zen student equals “meditates daily and full of compassion” to some people. You can imagine the reactions if I dropped the F-bomb!

There are all sorts of places where “beginner’s mind” can come in handy. Today, I feel really present to having Beginner’s Mind as I greet the new participants with first lessons, remembering how scary or exciting it can feel to start a new undertaking–while also being careful not to make assumptions about what anyone is thinking or feeling, as I just sink into letting them BE their experience, to have it fully the way they want to have it.

But I’m also thinking a lot about having “beginner’s mind” in other areas of my life, like my relationships. This past Friday, Andy and I had made plans to have dinner with some friends. As I was out and about that day, I thought of this dinner with our friends, and I relaxed as I imagined the evening, and then that triggered something else–another Friday night dinner from long ago, 10 years ago. I’d been dating this guy who was (and I’m seriously stepping into compassion by putting it this way), “not a match for me.” We’d been having this wonky week and he’d promised that we would go out to dinner on Friday night. I was really looking forward to that dinner because the last time we’d gone to this particular restaurant, we’d had a good time and in my insecure, lack-of-self-esteem place, I was thinking that revisiting the restaurant would somehow solve relationship issues such as being cheated on and trying to force myself to believe his line that “Well, we weren’t really committed at the time.” (Apparently, I have a lot of faith in Pacific Rim to solve life’s problems).

We broke up that Friday afternoon, before we ever got to dinner, and I remember that while I was crying, for some reason my brain just held on to that: “But we said we were going to go out tonight!” A fresh wave of tears would come every time I thought of how we’d made those plans and I’d thought all week that my Friday night was going to be this certain way, and it hadn’t happened.

And here I am, ten years later, making Friday night plans when it dawns on me that in some small way, a teensy-weensy-itty-bitty-widdle part of me still has a liiiiiittttlllle piece held in reserve that doesn’t “count on” plans falling together. That moment when I relaxed as I envisioned a happy evening had triggered a memory of a time when counting on something had fallen through and hurt immensely.

I believe that it’s only through slowing down and being willing to enter into “beginner’s mind” that those moments come to us–those flashes of insight where, as silly as it sounds and impossible as it seems, I recognize some place where I’m holding onto an old way of being. Once I had recognized it, it was interesting to play with the idea, think about it for a moment, and then–like that!–drop it completely, be done with it, and move right along to letting myself indulge in how much I was looking forward to a fun evening with good friends, having dessert in the living room of our house that we love so much, the candles lit in the fireplace.

Now, even that–the assumption of fun–is technically not “beginner’s mind,” but in my current way of viewing the world, I believe that there’s something really powerful in putting my faith in goodness. I choose the thoughts that serve me best, from moment to moment to moment. With that trigger reaction inside, there was no real “choice” going on–I wasn’t even conscious of what I was doing. Having had a moment of waking up, it felt good to sink into believing in possibility.

And in the end–it was a really lovely time among friends.

Where in your life would you most like to apply a dose of “beginner’s mind,” not making assumptions about the way things are or will be?