Zen Mind Beginner's Mind Pdf Download
Lalo Scalf
I love this! I always find when I slow down become purposeful the world starts to open up again. This reminds me to also reread Zen mind. Running always comes back to me when I keep it simple and follow the feel. Yoga helps as well. What an insightful article. ?? Thank you
Today I ran two miles. I don't usually talk much about my mileage\u2014to me, training is the least interesting thing about running\u2014but this I feel compelled to share. The two miles I ran was not a speed or interval workout. It wasn\u2019t up a mountain or around a track, and it wasn\u2019t because the dog got tired and plopped down in the middle of the trail and stubbornly refused to go on (though he did, luv you Pete!).
For the past five months, my body has not felt much like running. My joints ache and often when I get up from sitting or sleeping, I\u2019m so stiff I hobble around like I\u2019m 100 years old. Gradually I started cutting my mileage to the lowest it\u2019s been since I was a teenager. By fall, I\u2019d scaled back to two runs a week.
The common refrain about running is that too much wrecks our bodies, especially our joints. After two surgeries, my own brain started saying it, too: Hey, you had a good run. Time to hang it up.But I\u2019d heard of so many runners\u2019 second- and third acts that I knew better than to believe myself. I thought of Candice Burt who ran 50K every day for a world-record 200 days in a row and reported experiencing fewer injuries and illness as a result. I thought of so-called \u201Cstreak runners\u201D who run every day for 15 years straight. Maybe running has the opposite effect on us than we\u2019ve been led to believe.
To find out, I\u2019d have to teach myself a new way to run. I wasn\u2019t ready to run far yet, so I\u2019d have to run short. The problem was, like so many ultra runners, I\u2019d developed a skewed sense of distance. Anything under eight miles seemed like a short run, less than five barely counted. This, I knew, was ridiculous\u2014borderline delusional. Plenty of people derive a sense of accomplishment from two miles, as they should. When I first started running regularly as a 13-year-old, two miles qualified as a big day. How had I gotten so greedy about my miles?
Beginner\u2019s mind is a central teaching in Zen Buddhism. It means coming to your activity\u2014whether it\u2019s something you\u2019re proficient in or just learning\u2014with a freshness and openness of mind. Looking at something with a new perspective, shedding preconceived notions about our ability and loosening our grip on expectations and outcomes. It means cultivating a certain willingness of heart to meet whatever comes with an appreciation for the effort rather than a fixation on results.
I first learned about beginner\u2019s mind in 2017, after a traumatic wilderness accident left me broken in body and spirit and unsure if I\u2019d ever run again. The phrase comes from the classic book, Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind. My beloved friend Natalie brought me a copy of it one day that winter. It\u2019s time you read this, she said, waving it at me unceremoniously. The minute I started, my mind was blown.
As I write in Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World, coming out in April, \u201Cit was disguised as a manual on meditation, but I felt as if I\u2019d stumbled upon a set of instructions on how to live.\u201D
Eight weeks ago, on a Monday in late November, I ran a couple miles. The next day I did the same. And the next. I\u2019ve been going daily ever since, on in snowstorms, on hotel treadmills and around teensy island loops. Alone and with the dogs, with Steve and a daughter when I can rope her in. In all my years as a runner, I\u2019ve never run seven days a week, much less for eight weeks in a row. I guess you could call it a streak, but I don\u2019t really think of it that way. I think of it as practice. Process. Some days I jog a mile. Other days, five or six. I don\u2019t make a plan. I just listen to my body. Sometimes I feel free and fast like I used to and, with any luck, will again before too long. Other days I\u2019m an ancient aluminum stick figure, my metal joints throwing sparks with every step.
One day I\u2019ll wake up and not run. Maybe it will be tomorrow. For now I\u2019m just following the process to see where it leads. I\u2019m teaching my body that this is what we do: we run. We don\u2019t have to be runners or ultra runners or micro runners to run. When we run with beginner\u2019s mind, we are running.
Driving home from my little jog this morning, I saw a man at a stoplight holding a sign: Supplies stolen. Please help. The light was green so I couldn\u2019t stop, but as I drove away, I scanned the messy contents of my car: I had no cash, but I did have a quarter-bag trail mix, half a roll of TP, and a tube of sunscreen. I made a U-turn and opened my window, handing him the trail mix. \u201CI don\u2019t know what else you need but I have toilet paper and sunscreen,\u201D I offered. He took the TP, left the SPF, and I drove on.
Beginner\u2019s mind isn\u2019t a big deal. You don\u2019t have to make it a Thing or a Project or a self-improvement hack. You don\u2019t have to go looking for it. If you\u2019re paying attention, one day you\u2019ll wake up with a weird idea you can\u2019t quite explain. But deep down, you know. Listen. Follow your instinct. See where it leads.
Maybe it\u2019s as simple as walking home a different way next time or pulling a u-ey or pausing to appreciate the way the morning sun pours into your scruffy gear shed with all its crap leaning this way and that.
Beginner\u2019s mind is a practice in noticing, in patience and humility, in meeting yourself where you are, now, trusting that every action you take\u2014big or small\u2014will alter your molecules in imperceptible ways and take you someplace new.
"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."
Seldom has such a small handful of words provided a teaching as rich as has this famous opening line. In a single stroke, the simple sentence cuts through the pervasive tendency students have of getting so close to Zen as to completely miss what it's all about. An instant teaching on the first page. And that's just the beginning.
In the forty years since its original publication, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
has become one of the great modern spiritual classics, much beloved, much reread, and much recommended as the best first book to read on Zen. Suzuki Roshi presents the basics-from the details of posture and breathing in zazen to the perception of nonduality-in a way that is not only remarkably clear, but that also resonates with the joy of insight from the first to the last page. A book that you will return to over and over without exhausting its teachings.
'The most important thing in taking the zazen posture is shoulders should be on one line. Relax shoulders, and push up to keep your spine straight. Your ears and your your towards the ceiling with the back of your head. And you should pull your chin in. ... Your hands should form the "cosmic mudra." If you put your left hand on top of your right, middle joints of middle fingers together, and touch your thumbs lightly together (as if you held a piece of paper between them), your hands will make a beautiful oval.'
'The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in its wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is to control him. So it is with people: first let them do what they want, and watch them.'
'You may feel as if you are doing something special, but actually it is only the expression of your true nature; it is the activity which appeases your inmost desire. But as long as you think you are practicing zazen for the sake of something, that is not true practice.'
'So the kind of practice we stress thus cannot become too idealistic. If an artist becomes too idealistic, he will commit suicide, because between his ideal and his actual ability there is a great gap.'
'When you do something, if you fix your mind on the activity with some confidence, the quality of your state of mind is the activity itself. When are concentrated on your mind on the you the quality of your being, you are prepared for the activity.'
When we do something, we should do only that thing. Otherwise we are not gaining a true understanding of the thing we do, or doing this thing properly. How hard and hardened is your attitude? Can you accept what you do not know?
Enlightenment and its realisation is there, always. It is there before we sit zazen, during, and after. It is simply the truth of existence, the big mind that our small minds cannot see without right practice (and even that is no guarantee).
'Wisdom is not something to learn. Wisdom is something which will come out of your mindfulness. So the point is to be ready for observing things, and to be ready for thinking. This is called emptiness of your mind. Emptiness is nothing but the practice of zazen.'
Truth be told, there is no point in understanding Buddhism intellectually. It must be practiced. Me, in reading this book and making notes on it is, perhaps, utterly pointless. I should instead just go and sit zazen.
You can practice whenever you talk to another human being, dropping your ideas of how they should be and instead emptying your mind and seeing them as they are. Notice their good heart, their difficulties, and be grateful for them as they are. Love them for who they are and find compassion for their struggles.
When we hear this story, almost all of us want to be the best horse. If it is impossible to be the best one, we want to be the second best. This is, I think, the usual understanding of this story, and of Zen. You may think that when you sit in zazen you will find out whether you are one of the best horses or one of the worst ones. Here, however, there is a misunderstanding of Zen. If you think the aim of Zen practice is to train you to become one of the best horses, you will have a big problem. This is not the right understanding. If you practice Zen in the right way it does not matter whether you are the best horse or the worst one. When you consider the mercy of Buddha, how do you think Buddha will feel about the four kinds of horses? He will have more sympathy for the worst one than for the best one.
b37509886e