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New Buddhist
lobster
Crusty Veteran
Is it possible to have 'beginners mind'?
It always is something fresh to consider. Like, what is Buddhism? The Korean Zen koan, 'what is this'?
A new day of life. The mind of a beginner. :clap: I think I may meditate for a change . . .
Meditate for a change but Nothing . . . different . . .
It always is something fresh to consider. Like, what is Buddhism? The Korean Zen koan, 'what is this'?
A new day of life. The mind of a beginner. :clap: I think I may meditate for a change . . .
Meditate for a change but Nothing . . . different . . .
0
Comments
When you see the circle you are dealing with traces.
When you see the hand moving without moving to or from anywhere.
Then you are dealing with experience as action.
The difference is something to consider.
hmmm.... I thought beginners mind was just an open mind, free of thought limiting certainty.
In the chaos of the fluidity we call existence, can yesterday's certainty of truth hold a candle to the truth unfolding in this moment.
I think that a meditative practice is either the continual returning to beginners mind or is just more myopic play within identities sandbox.
To return to means to orientate towards something we conclusively affirmed as the beginners mind. As if there is a location, or state, or the "present" moment that we can orientate towards.
There isn't. Everything already is the beginners mind. Whatever is appearing is already it.
So we are fought with paradox.
To move towards something though noble is the problem.
And at the same time it isn't a problem.
This is what Dogen figured out as he asked the same question. If we are all endowed with Buddhahood yet why do we practice?
And for Dogen practice actualized the insight of Buddhahood. The beginners mind wasn't something to attain or it wasn't "something" but rather it was the activity, it was what it was pointing to. Not two.
@taiyaki
Ideal are easy to speak of and a worthy activity when practitioners don't use that finger to obscure what was being pointed at.
Myself, I do return to beginners mind because I leave, which speaks of the usable actuality of my practice as opposed to the ideal of someone elses.
Beginners mind for me does not really represent Dogen's polarity so much as simply waking up compared to dreaming.
It is no different than wavering back & forth across the razors edge of the middle way to assure that the ideal and the actual, stay together in a usable proximity.