While rereading Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki, I was struck by the book’s suggestions on how to go about practicing, which although it was within the context of meditation, still seemed applicable for anything in life which we must practice at. Just the title alone gives us one of the major points that seems to contradict our normal way of thinking about learning. Generally when learning something new we want to quickly get past our beginning mistakes and into a more proficient practice, failing to recognize the value in our lack of knowledge. As Suzuki says regarding “beginner’s mind”:
In Japan we have the phrase shoshin, which means “beginner’s mind.” The goal of practice is always to keep our beginner’s mind. Suppose you recite the Prajna Paramita Sutra only once. It might be a very good recitation. But what would happen to you if you recited it twice, three times, four times, or more? You might easily lose your original attitude towards it. The same thing will happen in your other Zen practices. For a while you will keep your beginner’s mind, but if you continue to practice one, two, three years or more, although you may improve some, you are liable to lose the limitless meaning of original mind.
When we first start learning something we generally have no clue what we are doing. We have the potential to go in almost any direction. As we being to learn more though, the knowledge we acquire can start to restrict our thinking. What might have initially seemed like an important question or suggestion will seem ridiculous after we have learned better. As we practice then, we will no longer look in that direction, as we know, or think we know, that there is nothing to be found over there. But often it is in these directions, rather than in the well worn paths that that new and interesting ideas can come from. The right, or seemingly right, path has already been explored, and most of the major discoveries already made, while the path we believe we know better than to traverse may still contain much to be explored. By maintaining a beginner’s mind and leaving ourselves open to possibilities that might seem absurd we may discover the solution to a problem we are facing in an unexpected location.
While we are learning, and practicing what we are working to learn, we can become discouraged as we find that we have not yet met our expectations of where we would like to be, or are not progressing as quickly as we’d like. While having goals and expectations is important for beginning to practice, they can also end up hurting our practice if failing to meet them causes us to get discouraged and to stop practicing. On discouragement when practicing Suzuki said:
Even when you practice zazen alone, without a teacher, I think you will find some way to tell whether your practice is adequate or not. When you are tired of sitting, or when you are disgusted with your practice, you should recognize this as a warning signal. You become discouraged with your practice when your practice has been idealistic. You have some gaining idea in your practice, and it is not pure enough. It is when your practice is rather greedy that you become discouraged with it. So you should be grateful that you have a sign or warning signal to show you the weak point in your practice. At that time, forgetting all about your mistake and renewing your way, you can resume your original practice. This is a very important point.
Often when we practice something with a particular goal in mind we can become discouraged as we fail to meet our expectations. It is then that we should remind ourselves that it is more important that we are taking the time to practice than necessarily hitting our goals as quickly as we would like to. If we maintain consistent and deliberate practice then eventually we will improve at what we are working at, perhaps not as quickly as we would like, but eventually.
When attempting to learn anything practice is critical, both as part of the initial learning process and then later to actually retain what we have learned. Regarding practice and the importance of it in life-long learning I was reminded of a quote from Charlie Munger which I had read in Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor by Tren Griffin:
I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up, and boy, does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you …. So if civilization can progress only with an advanced method of invention, you can progress only when you learn the method of learning. Nothing has served me better in my long life than continuous learning. I went through life constantly practicing (because if you don’t practice it, you lose it) the multidisciplinary approach and I can’t tell you what that’s done for me. It’s made life more fun, it’s made me more constructive, it’s made me more helpful to others, and it’s made me enormously rich. You name it, that attitude really helps.
We can spend a lifetime learning about a wide variety of topics, but if we don’t frequently go over the material and find a way to practice it, we are liable to quickly forget what we have learned. Munger offers a suggestion for how to go about a practice of life-long learning:
Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day.
By developing a habit of frequent reading and consistently practicing it we can slowly build up our knowledge over time. Of course as part of this it is also important to try to maintain a beginner’s mind throughout, as the acquirement of knowledge works to restrict our thinking to what we know, or think we know, we should leave ourselves open to all possibilities