“Beginner’s Mind”

A Sermon by Rev. Robert M. Hardies

All Souls Church, Unitarian

Washington, D.C.

Sunday, 4 January 2009

Before I share our reading this morning, let me just add a little bit to one of Shana’s announcements.  A little bit after the election, I preached a sermon – my theological reflection upon the election, and it was called “Dancing in the Streets,” and I told a story about how, on election night, I went out to 14^th and U and was dancing on the corner there.  After that sermon, a number of parishioners came up to me, remarking that they sort of doubted my ability to dance.  They said they couldn’t imagine me dancing on the streets with a bunch of college students on Election night.  And so, let me just say by way of invitation and challenge, come to the Inaugural Ball, and you’ll be able to see just how your minister dances, okay?  [Laughter]   

I chose as our reading this morning a poem that I thought would be appropriate for the first Sunday of the New Year, a poem by Denise Leverthal called “Beginners.”

But we have only begun to love the earth.
We have only begun to imagine the fullness of life.
How could we tire of hope? — so much is in bud.
How can desire fail?— we have only begun
To imagine justice and mercy, only begun to envision
How it might be
To live as siblings with beast and flower,
Not as oppressors.

Surely our river cannot already be hastening into the sea of nonbeing?
Surely it cannot drag, in the silt, all that is innocent?
Not yet, not yet— there is too much broken that must be mended,
Too much hurt we have done to each other
That cannot yet be forgiven.

We have only begun to know the power that is in us if we would join
Our solitudes in the communion of struggle.
So much is unfolding that must complete its gesture,
So much is in bud.

So much is in bud.

Well, it’s New Year’s again, time for a new beginning.  Out with the old and in with the new, time for a fresh start.  Yet, New Year’s comes around every twelve months, and somehow not much changes.  The economic forecast is just as bad today as it was a week ago, at the end of last year.  The war in Iraq now approaches its sixth anniversary.  The Israelis are still fighting the Palestinians.  It’s a new year, but that doesn’t mean that, magically, everything is going to change.  If the last year has taught us anything it’s that if change is going to happen it will be because we make it happen.

In his acceptance speech on Election Night, referring to the historic nature of his victory, President-elect Obama said, “The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”  He, of course, was quoting Dr. King, who in turn had been quoting the Unitarian preacher and abolitionist, Theodore Parker.  When they uttered those words, all three men knew that the universe only bends toward justice because we so shape it.  Otherwise, time just keep chugging along.  And before we know it, we’re out of time.

So if we want a new beginning in this new year, then we will have to make it so.  If we are hoping for new love, a new vocation, a renewed spirit or a closer sense of relationship with the holy in this new year, we will have to make it so. 

One of the most helpful spiritual insights that I’ve received about new beginnings comes from the Zen Buddhist notion of beginner’s mind.  Zen teaches us that we can make the new year a new beginning only if we approach it with the mind of a beginner.  So what do the Buddhists mean exactly by “beginner’s mind?”  If you were to ask a Zen master that question, she would likely respond by saying “Let me tell you a story.”  And this is the story she would tell.

There was once a scholar who visited a great Zen master to inquire into the meaning of Zen.  The scholar sat down before the master and began by asking him a question, but before the master had time to answer, the scholar asked another question and then another, and then the scholar began offering answers to his own questions, such that the Zen master barely got a word in edgewise.  After about an hour of this one-sided dialogue, the Zen master was finally able to interrupt the scholar long enough to offer him some refreshment.  “Excuse me, sir,” said the master, “May I offer you a cup of tea?”  “Why, yes, thank you,” replied the scholar, temporarily remembering his manners, but then he continued with his monologue.  When the tea was ready, the scholar held out his cup and the Zen master began to pour.  But when the cup was filled, the Zen master kept pouring, and the tea spilled out onto the scholar’s hand and then out onto the floor.  “Enough!” cried the scholar.  “My cup is full.  It won’t hold any more.”  “Yes,” said the Zen master, continuing to pour,  “and so is your mind.  You can’t learn Zen until you empty your cup.”

Now, I’m going to go out on a limb and venture a guess that if forced to choose between the two characters in our story, most of us would identify more with the scholar.  Washingtonians tend to be the kind of people whose cups, whose minds, are fully, right?  Full of information, certainly full of thoughts and opinions.  Full of data, full of our busy schedules, our multi-tasking.  Why else do we carry around our little PDAs if not to keep our minds from overflowing with all the knowledge.  “Enough,” we cry, “My cup is full; it won’t hold any more.”  “Yes,” replies the master, “You can’t learn Zen until you empty your cup.”

Wjat does it mean to empty our cup, to empty our minds?  What does this story teach us about beginner’s mind and how we might approach the new year?  Before you get the wrong impression, let me quickly say what beginner’s mind is not.  Beginner’s mind is not a mind that is devoid of information or knowledge.  It does not refer to a mind that disparages learning or discipline.  Instead, beginner’s mind refers to a particular quality of the mind of a novice, and that is its expansiveness, it’s sense of possibility.  In his book, “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind,” Suzuki Roshi writes, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind, there are few.”

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind, there are few.

Just last week, I was having lunch in a pretty fancy restaurant with a little boy and his mother.  The boy was sitting in a high chair between his mother and me when he reached out and grabbed my fork.  As I watched the boy with my fork, it soon became apparent that he did not know what a fork was for.  He was a beginner.  He put it in his ear.  He banged it on the counter.  When he finally put it in his mouth, it was the wrong end, and then he shrieked with delight at the noise that the fork made when he threw it to the floor.  All wonder, all mystery, all exploration.  That fork could be anything his little mind imagined.  It could do anything his chubby little fingers could make it do.  That is beginner’s mind.  Mystery.  Wonder.  Possibility.  Seeing things fresh.

So, on the other hand, we scholars, we of the full cup, we look at a fork and what do we see.  We know it as a food delivery device, right?  And when was the last time that we delighted in the noise that a fork makes when it hits the floor?  In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind, there are few.

Now when it comes to forks, an expert perspective might not be a great casualty.  I for one am willing to say definitively that the highest and best use for a fork is to deliver food to my mouth.  But in other areas of our lives, our expert minds, our full cups can really limit us.  Because it’s so full of received knowledge, our expert mind tends to trap us in familiar patterns, patterns of thought, patterns of behavior, patterns of relating to other people and to our world.  We get stuck in these patterns.  Maybe at the turn of the year, you are feeling stuck in some of these patterns. 

Take, for example, our love lives.  Have you ever known someone – maybe it’s you; maybe it’s a friend – who’s had a series of unfulfilling relationships with essentially the same person?  You know how we can date different people, but they’re relaly the same person?  That means that we’ve fallen into a limiting pattern in our love life, a pattern that’s preventing us from having a loving and mutual relationship with another human being.  All we see is the pattern.  We need to empty our cup, to start afresh.

Or take for example our careers.  Maybe we found a new job this year, but ran into the same problem with our new boss that we did with our old boss.  Maybe it’s not the boss who has the problem.  Maybe we need to rethink our approach to our career.  Maybe we need a new career. 

Our spiritual and emotional lives can fall into these same patterns as well.  I know that some of you keep a journal.  I’ve been journaling for more than ten years now and highly recommend it as a spiritual practice.  But one of the humbling things about journaling is going back and rereading your journal from ten years ago, only to discover that ten years ago you were struggling with the exact same problems that you’re dealing with today.  And you wonder, “Gee, in ten years, haven’t I grown at all?”

But there we are, ten years later, still struggling with forgiveness, still struggling with selfishness, still struggling to find a measure of grace in our lives.  We need to empty our cups.  We need to experience the world with a beginner’s mind.  It is possible for us to see our lives with fresh eyes.  Beginner’s mind is not only for the young.  Psychologists speak of a phenomenon very similar to beginner’s mind which they call “the second naivete.”  At a certain time in our lives, they say, human beings develop a kind of naievete, a humility and simplicity of mind. 

Unlike the naievete of our childhood, the second naievete is not born of innocence.  Rather, it’s the result of having been around long enough to know that you don’t know it all and that you never will, a realization that there are vast realms of knowledge and untold secrets that will forever remain a mystery to us, that each of us, no matter what our age is, in some sense, a beginner.  Think about it.  The universe is 14 billion years old.  The human race has been around for the last 2.5 million years.  And the oldest person in this sanctuary this morning may be eighty, ninety years old.  We are all beginners.

So if you want to develop a beginner’s mind, if you want to start the new year with a fresh perspective, I have one piece of advice for you, and that is to wake early.  My experience is that early morning is the time when our cups are least full, when our minds are at least half-empty.  Our waking hour is a kind of liminal space between sleep and wakefulness, between dream and consciousness.  So for me morning is a holy time; I pray right when I get out of bed.   And my journaling reveals a creativity and a freshness of perspective that is hard for me to access at other times of the day.  The morning is when I can cultivate beginner’s mind. 

Mary Oliver has a poem called “Why I Wake Early.”  I think you’ll hear a little bit of beginner’s mind in it.

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety –
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light –
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

Oliver’s poem is an example of what Emerson called “an original relationship to the universe.”  He once asked, “Why should we not enjoy an original relationship to the universe?  Why should we not being a fresh set of eyes to our lives, a fresh perspective to the world, a wondering, wandering heart to all our encounters?”  By letting us see the world afresh, beginner’s mind affords us this original relationship to the universe.  We see the world again, for the first time, and experience wonder, mystery, possibility.

In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.  May your new year be filled with abundant possibilities.   Amen.