BEGINNER’S MIND

Zen masters say that they have nothing to teach.  This is true, but only partly.  The problem is that what they have to teach is not teachable.  Their task, rather, is the short-circuiting of a person's analytical mind.  If successfully undone, this mind will land where he was at the start of its life, at what is called beginner's mind.

The Ch'an school of Buddhism in China is called Zen in Japan, as this is how "ch'an" is pronounced in Japan.  There are three branches of Zen in Japan, which were established in the 12th, 13th, and 17th centuries.  The two sects that are now most active are derived from the two most durable Chinese sects: the Rinzai, so named from the Japanese pronunciation of Lin-Chi, and the Soto, from the Chinese Ts'ao-tung.

The former favors the koan method where there is an enigma or puzzle that forces a person's mind outside its normal processes, so as to gain instant insight.  The Soto school prefers the zazen approach, or sitting meditation.  This is for attaining gradual awakening.  In both instances the aim is beginner's mind.  When it occurs it is called satori.  Rinzai's most vigorous advocate is the world-famous professor Dr. D.T. Suzuki.  Alan Watts liked to recount Suzuki's informal description of his satori: "It is like everyday experience, only about two inches off the ground."

In beginner's mind a person sees the unitary character of reality.  "I" and "not-I" are one.  Deliberative reason will not succeed here.  One cannot THINK oneself into this realization.  This is to say, there are two ways of dealing with the world.  One is to distinguish, describe, analyze, and, in pursuit of practical ends, to manipulate the world from the outside.  The other approach is to contemplate the world, much as Taoists do, from a position of one who is indistinguishably the same as it. 

This feeling of oneness is the mystical component of Zen, but it is different from the oneness in, for instance, Vedanta, which speaks of the oneness of Brahman.  Dr. Suzuki points out that there is always what may be called a sense of the “beyond” to Zen's oneness.  The experience is indeed our own, he says, but we feel it to be rooted elsewhere.  However, a SENSE of the beyond is all that can be said about it.  To call this beyond, the Absolute, or God, is to go further than the experience allows.