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

by Shunryu Suzuki

When you listen to someone, you should give up all your preconceived ideas and your subjective opinions; you should just listen to him, just observe what his way is. We put very little emphasis on right and wrong or good and bad. We just see things as they are with him, and accept them. This is how we communicate with each other. Usually

be quite natural to ourselves, and also to follow what others say or do in the most appropriate way, is quite difficult. If

You will acquire this kind of ability by practicing zazen. Zen is not some fancy, special art of living. Our teaching is just to live, always in reality, in its exact sense. To make our effort, moment after moment, is our way. In an exact sense, the only thing we actually can study in our life is that on which we are working in each moment. We cannot even study Buddha’s words.

But if we appreciate whatever problem we have as an expression of big mind, it is not a problem anymore. Sometimes our problem is that big mind is very complicated; sometimes big mind is too simple to figure out. That is also big mind. But because you try to figure out what it is, because you want to simplify the complicated big mind, it becomes a problem for you.

“Everything comes out of emptiness.” One whole river or one whole mind is emptiness. When we reach this understanding we find the true meaning of our life. When we reach this understanding we can see the beauty of human life. Before we realize this fact, everything that we see is just delusion. Sometimes we overestimate the beauty; sometimes we underestimate or ignore the beauty because our small mind is not in accord with reality.

When you can sit with your whole body and mind, and with the oneness of your mind and body under the control of the universal mind, you can easily attain this kind of right understanding. Your everyday life will be renewed without being attached to an old erroneous interpretation of life. When you realize this fact, you will discover how meaningless your old interpretation was, and how much useless effort you had been making.

Our understanding of Buddhism is not just an intellectual understanding. True understanding is actual practice itself.

As a philosophy, Buddhism is a very deep, wide, and firm system of thought, but Zen is not concerned about philosophical understanding. We emphasize practice. We should understand why our physical posture and breathing exercise are so important.