Zen Mind, Beginner\'s Mind You

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

You for Me, Me for You: Like Buddha

Many of the core principles of Buddhism are decidedly foreign to those trained in Western values and concepts of religion. What parallels there are between Buddhism and most typical Western religions are complicated by what is frequently perceived as an unconventional means of achieving those parallels. Most religions have a conception of the afterlife, or of a fate reserved for people and their souls once they die. In Buddhism, this concept is referred to as nirvana. It is easy to draw a comparison to this conception and that of heaven, the typical haven that Christians believe awaits those who live a benign life once their physical bodies have died. In Buddhism, however, nirvana has points of similarity with heaven -- but it is more. So very much more.

Essentially, nirvana -- as described within Shunryu Suzuki's manuscript Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation -- is a state of perfection. There is nothing quite so sublime, and certainly nothing better, than this state that awaits those that die. However, the notion of perfection in Buddhist thought is decidedly at variance with this notion in contemporary Western thought. Perfection is simply a sense of completeness. It is everything and the intrinsic role of the individual in that everything. The best way of describing the sort of fulfillment and unification that the Buddhist conception of nirvana revolves around is to picture all of the people that a particular person is fond of: his parents, siblings, best friends, favored co-worker, wife, etc. Now picture all of those people existing in one place, the only place they can, somewhere enjoyed by all with everything they could ever need accessible. In such a place, with such people, there would be nothing else to desire. There would be complete fulfillment on the part of everyone there. This lack of desire, this visceral harmony with everyone and everything around is the essence of Nirvana -- and the state that Buddhists believe they return to after death.

The most critical aspect of nirvana is that Buddhists actually believe they are returning to it. "It," however, is not a place in the conventional physical sense. It is that state of harmony and completion, but it has nothing to do with location, physical limits or anything of the sort. and, although Buddhists believe this state can be returned to after the physical body has expired, they also believe it can be returned to while living in the physical body. The following quotation helps to elucidate this paradox.

"Before we were born we had no feeling: we were one with the universe. This is called "mind only," or "essence of mind," or "big mind." After we are separated by birth from this oneness, as the water falling from the waterfall is separated by wind and rocks, then we have feeling. We have difficulty because we have feeling" (Suzuki 91).

This uniformity with all of existence is what Buddhists believe that people were a part of before their births. They also believe that people go back to this uniformity after their deaths. But the concept of big mind is also something that Buddhists attempt to reach during their lives -- and is actually the primary point of this religion. Buddhists are continually attempting to achieve this big mind state during their life, which they believe they will inevitably reach after their deaths in nirvana as well.

For Christians or adherents to most other monotheistic religions, the only way to reach heaven or the afterlife is to die. and, as previously denoted, dying is one way to return to nirvana. However, Buddhists believe that they can also reach the big mind state that is akin to nirvana while living, by utilizing some of the other core principles of this religion. One of these core principles is evinced within the practice of zazen, or meditation. As the author of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind denotes, "…by your practice of zazen you can cultivate this feeling" (p. 95) of totality and uniformity with the universe that is the primary focus of Buddhism.

Yet the way of actuating this ideal state of big mind is decidedly counterintuitive. Westerners are used to thinking of heaven as something that one has to earn by going out and accomplishing feats of altruism to demonstrate his or her worth. In Buddhism, however, when one practices zazen and reaches a state of enlightenment that connects one with the entire universe, the exact opposite is the methodology employed to do this. Buddhists must learn to reject all worldly things, all desires, and ultimately free themselves from external concerns in order to reconnect with the oneness that they were a part of before they were born. The key is to focus one's mind on nothing, on emptiness -- which is what zazen itself cultivates. The focus on emptiness inherently connects one with the universe, and not the mere physical world and the thoughts it motivates, as the following quotation from Suzuki demonstrates. "We say, everything comes out of emptiness. One whole river or one whole mind is emptiness" (p. 94). As this quotation implies, by emptying one's mind of conscious thought and desire, one can connect with the eternal, the all or "everything." The reference to the river is simply the conception that all things can be one, much like a river is, before events (such as a waterfall) separates the water into individual drops.