Beginner's Mind
Approaching each experience with fresh eyes, free from preconceptions and expert's arrogance.
Shoshin (beginner's mind) is the Zen attitude of openness and lack of preconceptions when studying, even at an advanced level. The expert knows what to expect; the beginner experiences wonder. Research shows that maintaining beginner's mind enhances creativity, learning capacity, and emotional resilience. Children naturally possess this quality - every moment is fresh and fascinating. As we age, we lose it through conditioning and assumptions. Zen practice is about recovering this original mind, seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary, meeting the ten-thousandth sunrise with the same awe as the first.
In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few.
Written about in
- What Zen says about fear and anxiety
Shoshin means meeting the situation without the expert's set of expectations. A good deal of what frightens us is the prediction rather than the thing.
- What Zen says about doubt
Suzuki's formulation is that in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities and in the expert's there are few. Applied to doubt this inverts the usual anxiety — the person who is certain has fewer moves available than the one still asking.