Beginner’s mind is when you just start your study, you have no prejudice, no preconceived ideas. You don’t know anything about Buddhism, and you open your whole mind to Buddhism. That is beginner’s mind. But after you studied our way, you may feel as if you understood Buddhism, and as if you attained something special. That is quite usual. But at that time you lose your beginner’s mind. So, if you feel even though you are studying Buddhism, you should like to study more, and your study is not good enough, then what you study is Buddhism. Do you understand? That is beginner’s mind. And that beginner’s mind is also big mind.
—cuke.com/ig for links to the source of the image. Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 68-07-23 as found on shunryusuzuki.com, edited by PF. These posts are also on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram. We are continually working on improving the quality of transcriptions of Suzuki's lectures. After a new "verbatim transcript" is made, we create a minimally edited version which is more readable. See the most recently completed transcripts at shunryusuzuki.com/n.
