Beginner’s Mind

I picked up my copy of Shunryu Suzuki’s classic, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, sometime in the 1980’s, when I was buying a Zen book a year but wasn’t meditating. Suzuki Roshi wasn’t talking to me. I didn’t finish it. A decade later, when I was sitting every morning, I tried Suzuki again. I loved him. When I began hosting a sitting group– Roshi Jishu Holmes told me I wasn’t ready to give talks myself; I could read something – I read each week from Beginner’s Mind. “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” I loved that teaching.

Suzuki’s book is still on my shelf, and recently I began it again. Suzuki begins with posture. That makes sense. That’s where my first teacher, Kyudo Nakagawa Roshi, began with me; but as I read I couldn’t help noticing that Suzuki Roshi was sounding very much like an expert. This is the way to sit. Legs crossed this way. Hands held that way. This way and only this way.

I grew up in the world before polio vaccine. The images of people in iron lungs remain vivid, people who couldn’t sit in any posture. Lying in a full-length iron tube was their life. It was a grace of that experience that I’ve always known that there is not just one posture for zazen. Zen was a practice for people suffering with polio as well as everybody else.

Zen practice is not about mastering a physical feat. It’s about learning to pay attention. And we begin by paying attention to our bodies. Notice the tensions which arise as we sit and make adjustments. Release the tensions. The full lotus is a great posture for those whose bodies can do it. It’s a gift from the Indian yogis. It’s a starting point. Try it. Learn from the yogis, from the experts, but more importantly learn from your body.

For me, there’s a lesson here which is even more important than posture. Beginner’s mind ain’t easy. Even Suzuki Roshi could fall into expert’s mind. It’s a hard trap to avoid.