“Beginner’s Mind” in Zen and Early Buddhism: its Development and Difference 

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Routine cuts out thoughtfulness and intention. Always being open allows you to be flexible and honest, two very beneficial virtues!

"In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind, there are few." This quote lives rent free in my head, such profound words from suzuki. Shoshin may very well be the most important and fundamental teaching in dogen's school of zen.

Sounds very much like Daoism/ Zhuangzi. Thank you for the content I always enjoy your videos.

"Like this cup, you are full of your own preconceptions, and beliefs. How can i show you zen, if you do not first empty your cup."

I was Suzuki-roshi's student for one year. This was at a time (1970) when, fresh out of college, I had only been exposed to DT Suzuki and Paul Reps. That is, I had none of the orienting perspectives that one might gather from a classic like "What the Buddha Taught". To this very day, I can recall the roshi's presence, the way he set down his cup or glanced to one side. Those memories have left an indelible trace or aura. But I agree with you (and Shakyamuni). It was a definite disadvantage to have "baby mind" rather than the basics of Buddhism.

Thank u for this thorough explanation

I think this huge emphasis on beginner's mind is not so much from Suzuki but rather his students who, ironically, came to Zen with fixed ideas of what Zen is - influenced mostly by D.T Suzuki and the beat Zen era. Richard Baker for example is the one who wrote the introduction to ZMBM which is often quoted and defined Beginner’s mind. I think the case could be made that Suzuki was not just talking about an empty mind, but rather a beginner’s mind as bodhicitta, one’s initial aspiration for enlightenment. The evidence for this being: He named San Francisco Zen Center Hosshinji - “Beginner’s Mind Temple”　発心 short for arousing the aspiration for enlightenment. Not the “shoshin” that is usually mentioned. In Shobogenzo when the phrase beginner’s mind is used it’s a translation for or related to bodhicitta. Dogen never talks about Beginner’s mind in the way we commonly understand it now. Thanks for your videos!

I'll meditate on this. The person who meditated yesterday isn't here, but if I ever meet her, I'll share your advice. 😇

I just finished Beginners Mind by Suzuki a few weeks ago. It was actually a really good read. I'm not usually much for Zen, I find it to be too confusing and contradictory of itself, but I enjoy Suzukis talks.

Hi Doug. Thank you SO much for your content. It has helped me in so many ways being on this path. 🙏🏼 When talking about the beginner’s mind, I come to think of your video on Zen Buddhism, and the fact that we don’t really know what Satori is, but that it doesn’t really seem to be the complete extinction of greed, hatred and ignorance. I’ve thought about it for some time, and I may be very wrong. But if Satori is an immediate experience of life beyond dualisms and conceptions, then it must be experience in the here and now, the present moment. Desiring or hatred for the future or the past cannot exist, and neither can it for the present moment. The moment you desire something, you don’t live in the present moment where that thing doesn’t exist, and the moment you hate something, you are thinking of a scenario that does not exist as of right now. In this way, some of the evil roots have indeed been extinguished. I’m not sure this way of thinking holds up. The fact that I’m thinking might be the root problem in itself 😆 Best regards from Denmark. 🙏🏼

I am reminded of what the wise teacher Yoda said. "You must unlearn what you have learned."

Hey thanks dude. I was looking for some new kind of vantage point and this deep dive was great 😌

This is excellent and clarifying. Many thanks.

Very well explained. Thanks a lot for the video! Greetings from Germany. 🙏🏻

Good look at the topic. Important to separate the common sense meaning of beginners mind as having an "attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject" vs. an abstract original mind notion. "Many Chinese Buddhists ... were dismayed by so remote a vision of liberation and sought to reimagine it in more accessible ways" -- Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism By Jacqueline I. Stone

Looking at the past video and this one, bhavanga mind = luminous mind = karmic mind. In other words, >> eye + picture forms vision, the initial mind formed for vision is luminous - spot on!. What I can't understand is that, you get all this highly technical stuff right, yet you still talking about impermanency 😊 😊

I feel zen is like a mindset where we are trying not to attain any emotional state happy or excited or anything , let mind and circumstances do it.

What a great setting for this video 👍🏻

Awesome

This is exactly what I’ve been thinking about lately. I think the problem of course is that infants and animals (which we sometimes assume have limited ability to think) can still become anxious and so on. But I think whether it is completely accurate or not, there is a nugget of truth to it because it is true that in my opinion that as we age, clinging to concepts occurs naturally with culture and society. Even at a “lower” level we say that infants lack a sense of self, object permanence and even Theory of Mind (other minds). From a purely epistemological perspective, one can argue that this is “up to debate” is there “really” object permanence or is that a feature of our minds like an adaptation? A lot of what I read in philosophy of mind and a little neuroscience is that the brain is like an anticipation machine, not just on a conscious level, but that’s also kind of the lesson from optical illusions. Have you ever seen those paragraphs with double “the” like “the the” and you don’t realize it’s there until you come back to it or when words are spelled incorrectly but we can still get their meaning pretty fast? Other important concepts like the problem induction also come up in my thinking here. Basically, if you take that “skeptical” viewpoint on some of these issues, your conception of the world doesn’t err on the side of “determinism, pure cause and effect” but rather something one might call a more “emotivist” perspective. Like Hume said, “...reason ought only be a slave to the passions.” Hume is considered an empiricist because of his emphasis on experience in acquiring knowledge, but in a way you can re-interpret and say, “Look, induction is a problem. How do we know? From reason. By thinking about it.” Paradoxically, reason is kind of essential otherwise stuff doesn’t make sense at all but “Pure Reason” where the “jungle of views (metaphysics)” emerges can be doubted. I think when we say “cognition or rationalism” there is an association with the classic scientific worldview where there are clear laws that govern the universe and there’s that (uniformity of nature). But the problem that underlies that is the problem of induction. A lot of sense of “constancy” and “permanence” we see is part of a worldview we adopted because of common sense or cultural influence about how the world works. I think Buddha’s ideas of non-permanence should not just be taken on his word, but we can adopt it ourselves through our own reasoning. Otherwise it sounds very mysterious. I think that’s one of the problems with philosophy and maybe scientific discourse is we are all kind of conditioned with thinking the way we thought a few hundred years ago. I took basic two-semesters of physics in college and it was all Newtonian. We know Newton was absolutist in his concept of space and time. But not Einstein, and perhaps to a greater extent Quantum Mechanics paints an even less certain picture (I’m not an expert in these fields disclaimer*). So in that sense most people found Newton counterintuitive when they first learn his physics, if we learn it at all. But the newer views are even more counterintuitive to “common sense.” So that’s my thought on this issue, we have a “common sense” derived from experience (induction) that can be called into question and we should take it seriously rather than sweeping it under the rug and pretending the consensus reality or “common sense” is just the way things are. That’s kind of how I arrived at Buddhism because I switch from just thinking “These are all interesting ideas, who knows what true? To having them have a stake in how I conduct myself, how I react to things. Not just taking on ideas, but embodying them in a way. I think this can be viewed as a “rationalist” path to Buddhism where cognition isn’t the enemy. It too is like a raft, like the Dharma as said in other videos where you think through all of these problems then you reach a point counterintuitively “clearing the minds of thoughts and concepts” in meditation makes a lot of sense. Anyway, I don’t speak for Buddhism or any school, I just integrate it and like to see how it fits in with my own journey. Thanks for the video.

I really like your shirts.

i think your view on the topic exemplifies the idea of the middle way. whether it's the Buddha's or Suzuki's way, it's just a method, and touting either as the absolute right way seems extreme. there are merits in both methods, and which one to use depends on the particular situation at a given time

I'm just curious what difference between an infant's mind and ignorant mind. An infant still goes along with emotions/attachments/cravings? He cries when he wants to eat, he laughs when he was pleased by someone, etc. but does he understand?

If you wondered what the crows were fighting about, you are on the right path

Hard to listen with an ad every 2 minutes :(

Could you cancel out the ads in the video? It's kinda disruptive

No tabula rasa then. And a pointing towards the teachings of Ajahn Chah..

Ah brother! I fear you lay too much emphasis on 'beginner's mind' and the analogy you make with the mind of a baby. If Suzuki had wanted to say 'baby's mind' he certainly could have. It is similar to the mistake made by some who suggest animals are enlightened because they don't have concepts. Actually, the notion of 'beginners mind' in context simply means that we should TRY to approach every situation without preconceptions (as difficult or impossible as that may be). It is a heuristic--not a doctrine. I've practiced Zen for more than 12 years now (in the Soto tradition of Dogen). The point of the emphasis on 'conditioning' is that each of us approaches and enters each moment from a particular perspective that has been and is conditioned by our previous experience and that together with new experiences shapes our current experience. Dogen is very good on this. One aspect of Dogen's practice is to 'destabilize' the conviction that we are 'right' or that our views are 'correct' so that we can open up to the possibilities that inhere in each moment of our existence. Any teacher who says we can see reality "as it is" ignores his/her own positionality (ignores the empty nature of 'reality'). For practical purposes (purposes of experience and description), there is no reality independent of of perspective (I look at the world one way, my cat sees and experiences it in another--whose 'view' is correct? Mine or the cat's?). Looking at practice and at the world with 'beginner's mind' is a heuristic--not a doctrine and certainly not a claim that babies are enlightened beings. In Zen, in the zen I practice and that I believe was Dogen's practice, enlightenment is not a state of mind or consciousness. Enlightenment is action, self-less action, both on and off the cushion. Thus we teach, practice is enlightenment, or better, practice/enlightenment. Dogen, and I, believe this action flows from "who we really are" -- "our true self"--or "true nature". This true self or true nature is our inter-dependent "self" that is all/what we are when our egoistic, 'little self" gets out of the way. Self-less action (that is action with no thought of personal gain) is tempered by wisdom, tempered by experience--but the key determinant isn't whether it contains elements of 'learning" or conceptualization or rationality. The key element in enlightened action is that it is selfless, it takes as its object what is not harmful but what is beneficial to one's self and other. Can we, do we, make mistakes? Of course, that's the reality of life. But what matters is the intent. Oh brother, I fear that your rational mind and your committment to a situated reason leads you wrongly. Buddha was a man, what he said was right for his time and for his audiences, but he probably would have said something different if the times or the people were different. Too much reliance on scripture and conditioned rational discourse is sure to lead you down the wrong path. My advice, sit for a while, then go enjoy a walk in that little bit of nature behind you. Forget what you know, pay attention to how you feel, be present to the world around you. Gassho,

All intellectual conceptualization are empty...devoid of essence...mind dabbles around