The whole “beginner’s mind” concept applies to more than just your approach to meditation. It can also be used as a way of thinking about your daily life too.
Let’s do a quick thing before we talk about this some more. Put down the gadget that you’re reading this on, and go walk across the space you’re in – go all the way to the opposite side of the room, or house, or garden – then walk back again and continue reading.
What happened? Make a note if you like, we’ll come back to this in a minute.
Now think about kids or young pets and how totally absorbed they are in everything they experience – all the time. Put a bunch of coloured blocks in front of a baby, or a ball in front of a puppy, and watch the delight – they’re seeing those things with a beginner’s mind – maybe not for the first time, but with the excitement of seeing the new.
Now ask: what happened to us? You and me, and our friends, families, other adults? Why aren’t we more like puppies or kittens or babies? Well, I guess we got used to everything somehow – in the stress, the arrangements, the planning, the adult life, it just gets really easy to forget how absolutely incredible our world around us really is, how extraordinary it is just to exist, to be.
Go take that walk again. This time, go really slowly, and try to notice everything. A good technique I like to use is to focus on that moment when your eyes flit from one thing to another – a leaf! a piece of gravel! a sofa! a piano! (I have some strange things in my house…) – you can name them if you like but most important, just notice them. Stop. Look closely. Pick whatever-it-is up and turn it over (maybe not the piano…) – “do a raisin practice” by really, properly noticing everything about it.
This is beginner’s mind.
The challenge is remembering to do this on a regular basis. That’s where the formal practice will help, nudging your mind slowly but surely into a way of thinking which is more generally aware, all the time.
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
Einstein
