Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind By Suzuki Roshi

A classic little book by Suzuki Roshi called Zen Mind, Beginners Mind captures this trait and promotes the practice of zen meditation as a way for adults to recapture it. The beginner’s mind is not burdened with old baggage: “Been there, done that.” Children must face challenges for the first time; if they feel fear, it is because of an unknown. Adults need to bring adult capabilities to the beginner’s mind; their fear ought to be in response to the question, “So, what’s new?” when all they can say is “Same ole, same ole.” The real fear that adults ought to face down is not the unknown, but the known, that which we think we know so well that there is nothing new about it. The challenge adults face is that the gate to the kingdom of abundant life seems locked. The gate only appears to be locked when the now is not new. A line from Suzuki Roshi’s book captures the adult dilemma this way. “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”

Implicit in this combination is also a desire to share, if not always in the play itself, then in recounting the playful activity to another later. When these components unite in any given activity, there is a “for itself” quality that requires no outside justification and expects none. The evidence for this is in the complete satisfaction one feels, whether child or adult, during and after. By contrast, imagine any activity billed or promoted as play, but which has any of the above qualities missing. Then what you have may be extolled or