In the practice of Zen there is a virtue to which we aspire called called Beginner’s Mind. It is like having the non-reactive mind of a child, innocent of prejudices, expectations, preconceived ideas, or bias. In this culture, we are rewarded for being experts. What is the value of expertise?
Take this salt shaker on the table here. If you were to ask me what it was, I would say something like, “It’s a salt shaker. You turn it upside down and sprinkle a moderate amount of it’s contents onto your food.” And really that’s about all a salt shaker is to me and I would regard myself as something of an expert on the subject.
Now imagine a 10 month old child curiously peering at that salt shaker from his high chair. What is this curious object to him? The possibilities are endless! If I were to thoughtlessly set it down on the table within his reach, he might reach his chubby little hand out and knock it over. It makes a captivating thud on the surface of the table and little white grains come spilling out. Fantastic! He reaches out again and is able to grab it and lift it toward him. It has weight. The contents shift around inside as he tilts it. Awesome! His underdeveloped motor functioning causes him to jerk the shaker upward and send more white grains out and onto the infant’s arm, which he is now fascinated with and, as he uses his other hand to touch the salt on his arm, unintentionally drops the salt shaker onto the floor where it again, makes a loud thud, and spins counter clockwise two and a half times spilling more white grains in a circumference. Suddenly, the child reaches down in the direction of the floor to see what else this magical contraption can do and when he is limited by the restriction of the high chair, he cries. Well, what does this object mean to him if you were to ask him. A lot more than it does to you and me! Shunryu Suzuki said, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”
Beginner’s Mind is the ability to look at things just as they are, without all the labels, categories, and judgments we impose on it. But without all that, how can we be experts on anything? To be an expert requires that you limit the possibilities for alternate viewpoints. You trade the wonder of that open curiosity for certainty. It’s another way of protecting ourselves from disappointment when we thought it was suppose to be one way and it turned out to be another. Once you’re an expert . . . game over. There’s no more room to explore, create, discover, you already know. That’s a shame.
An expert goes to a restaurant and when his food turns out to be different than he thought, he says, “Eww. Not good. This is not the way mole is suppose to taste! Send it back!” A beginner’s mind will say, “Hmm. Interesting. I wonder what they used in this sauce. Maybe this is the way they do it in that part of the country.” See the difference?
Now let’s take this into the bedroom shall we? You and your spouse are in heated conflict about something that you’ve both silently pondered committing gruesome homicide over (when I’m sure to anyone else seems painfully superficial—let’s say leaving his socks on the floor instead of putting them into the laundry basket). You revisit this argument frequently and long enough that the mere sight of socks throws you into a hypermetabolic state and uncontrollable facial spasms. You KNOW, don’t you, that you are right here. He dropped them on the floor, inches from the laundry basket! Why is he incapable of doing this one little thing?
In couples therapy, this person would be looking at me in anticipation of some validation that they are right and that her husband is indeed a complete slob, or worse, intentionally driving her to insanity. After some deep breathing, I might introduce beginner’s mind. And it goes something like this:
Imagine you are from a far away land and were not familiar with American customs, including marital conventions and expectations. How would you describe his behavior of leaving his socks on the floor? Just describe it as it were happening excluding any judgment or evaluation of what he is doing, just what you observe. This removes the drama and negative feelings about what is happening so that we can discuss the problem in a less heated manner.
I would also ask the husband to describe her reaction to the socks on the floor without the fear, resentment, irritation that he would normally interject as an expert. An expert might say, “She’s a huge nag and is always up my ass about the god damned socks! She’s always trying to control me!” She might say, “He’s such a fucking caveman! He doesn’t care about me in the least if he can’t do this one simple thing. In fact, he’s probably doing it for the satisfaction of seeing me pick up after him. Misogynist!”
In contrast, a beginner’s mind might say something like, “He seems to prefer leaving the socks here and since he is usually a pretty rational guy, there must be some rationale for this behavior. I wonder what it could be.” Or, “She gets very upset when she sees these socks here. Is it just socks, or is there more to it than that?” And of course there is more to it, but they would never get to any of that if they continue asserting their “rightness” or expertise about their individual positions. Stop being right! If you are certain you’re right, you’re wrong.
Beginner’s mind is counter-intuitive in that it seems to go against what comes naturally in many cases. When someone cuts me off in traffic, it is natural to think the other driver either has a problem with me or is a phenomenally inconsiderate individual. So that initial reaction, efficiently formulated by years of similar experiences that have created a trigger happy neurological state, seems to make the most sense if it goes unchallenged.
To challenge our reactive mind is not easy or natural, but it can be done. And eventually, the results get generalized to other situations that might induce anger or judgment. If you can use beginner’s mind in one situation, you can apply it elsewhere, and the more it gets applied the easier it gets because you are creating and strengthening a new neural network. This use-dependent network eventually becomes your primary response and the need for previous defenses, like anger, dissolves away. But, of course, I could be wrong.