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

by Shunryu Suzuki

how to maintain beginner’s mind through your meditation and in your life.

write in the most straightforward, simple way as if you were a beginner, not trying to make something skillful or beautiful, but simply writing with full attention as if you were discovering what you were writing for the first time; then your full nature will be in your writing.

shoshin,

means “beginner’s mind.”

If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything.

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.

When we have no thought of achievement, no thought of self, we are true beginners.

Then we can really learn something. The beginner’s mind is the mind of compassion.

When our mind is compassionate, it is boundle...

how important it is to resume our boundless original mind. Then we are al...

This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner.

practice zazen, you will begin to appreciate your beginner’s mind.

zazen posture.

The position expresses the oneness of duality: not two, and not one.

Our body and mind are not two and not one.

Our body and mind are both two and

one.

our life is not only plural, but also singular.

Each one of us is both dependent and independent.

We die, and we do not die.

So when we take this posture it symbolizes this truth.

Your hands should form the “cosmic mudra.”

put your left hand on top of your right, middle joints of your middle fingers together, and touch your thumbs lightly together (as if you held a piece of paper between them),

When you try to attain something, your mind starts to wander about somewhere else.

We do not exist for the sake of something else. We exist for the sake of ourselves.

If you slump, you will lose your self. Your mind will be wandering about somewhere else; you will not be in your body.

If the microphone I use when I speak exists somewhere else, it will not serve its purpose.

When we have our body and mind in order, everything else will exist in the right place, in the right way.

But usually, without being aware of it, we try to change something other than ourselves, we ...

us.

it is impossible to organize things if you yourself ...

When you do things in the right way, at the right time, everything el...

you think, “I breathe,” the “I” is extra.

to be aware of the movement does not mean to be aware of your small self, but rather of your universal nature,

Time and space are one.

To live in the realm of Buddha nature means to die as a small being, moment after moment.

When we lose our balance we die, but at the same time we also develop ourselves, we grow.

Whatever we see is changing, losing...

The reason everything looks beautiful is because it is out of balance, but its background is...

the realm of Buddha nature, losing its balance against a backgroun...

you see things without realizing the background of Buddha nature, everything appears to b...

you understand the background of existence, you realize that suffering itself is how we live,...

“To go eastward one mile is to go westward one mile.”

try to obtain freedom without being aware of the rules means nothing.

do not try to stop your thinking. Let it stop by itself.

practice free from gaining ideas is based on the Prajna Paramita Sutra.

“Form is emptiness and emptiness is form.”

When the restrictions you have do not limit you, this is what we

mean by practice.

As long as you are concerned about what you do, that is dualistic.