Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice

"It’s genius. I really think it’s one of the best books on the planet. I mean, I’m not the most widely read person, so take that with a pinch of salt, but I really do. When you go into retreat—long-term retreat, a year or more—you’re not normally allowed to take books in with you. Occasionally, though, some teachers will let you to take a few books. I was told by my teacher—even though it was a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, and this is teachings from a Zen master—he said: “If you take just one book in with you for the year, take this book.” So that’s quite an endorsement, you know. It says a lot for the book. It’s about meditation, but it’s bigger than that: it’s about life. And he talks a lot about ‘big mind’ and ‘small mind,’ small mind being our intellectual/thinking mind, which is very important. It’s the mind of relativity; the relative mind, the dualistic mind. But he also talks about this ability to fall back and rest in ‘big mind’, or awareness, and to see life with a different perspective and approach it. “Every time I read it, it still has the effect of pulling me out of everyday life, and making me see the world in a very different way” So, meditation is a technique, and there are lots of different techniques. But actually, the technique is not really the important thing, although most people think it is. It’s actually how you approach the technique. This is what Suzuki Roshi focuses on. And this is true for so many things in our life: it’s often not about the things that happen; it’s about how we’re relating to them. It’s amazing. You don’t have to read the whole book—you can just read one of the chapters, which are only four or five pages long. Every time I read it, even now when I reckon I’ve read it more than 40 or 50 times, it still has the effect of pulling me out of everyday thinking, out of everyday life, and making me see the world in a very different way. I have no idea how he does it: he’s transcended religion, transcended tradition, transcended mind itself. And therefore he’s able to deliver it in a way that anybody can relate to. It’s a book for anybody. Regardless of whether they have an interest in meditation, as it’s about more than that. It’s about life. But that whole idea of a ‘beginner’s mind’ is an important part of the meditation journey for sure: it’s very easy to assume that if we’re sitting down and doing the same thing—sitting in the same position with our eyes closed each day, to fall into a routine or habit, because we’re trying to replicate an experience. But if we look more closely, we see the mind is always changing. Different people, different places in our mind; different thoughts, different sensations. So, maintaining that sort of interesting, curious, open mind—or as he prefers it, ‘beginner’s mind,’ is a really important part of the practice."