What is the beginner’s mind and why is it a secret to a truly good life?
It is probably one of the most powerful secrets, one of the most powerful tools that you can learn on your path to happiness. It comes naturally to dogs and children, but we have unlearned and forgotten it.
Seeing with the eyes of a beginner, living with the mind of a beginner, is like drawing treasures out of a chest which never empties.
In the book ‚Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind‘ the Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki says:
„In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.“
The wonderful thing about this secret, you don’t have to become a Zen student to master it. It starts with a decision and then it just takes discipline, and a little wakefulness. The reward is overwhelming.
In his TED-Talk on gratefulness the Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast explains that we take too many things for granted in our lives:
The magic of electric light brought to our homes at the turn of a switch, the drinkable water which runs out of the taps in our homes…
When you put yourself in a beginner’s mind, and see these things as the wonders that they really are, you feel pure joy as you realize how lucky you are.
Instead of giving yourself in to automatic negative-thoughts, which so often tend to take hold of our minds, and our time, and slowly start to become our lives, you may allow yourself to search for the magic that life offers everywhere in everything.
Nina Schmid, Februar 2016
Dies ist ein Auszug aus dem demnächst erscheinenden Buch von Nina Schmid:
„The Anagram of God is Dog. The Magic Dog’s Seven Secrets to a Truly Good Life.“
Sagen Sie uns was Sie denken!
#Karmapa on Conflict
As Buddha Shakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism says,
„Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world.“
In the face of so much conflict, how can we manifest a world that heals, rather than destroys?
In many ways, conflicts are inevitable as we are living in an ever-changing world; they are part of our life. How we approach them, and whether we respond to them in a violent or nonviolent way, is very important. From a Buddhist perspective, ignorance is believed to be the original cause of conflict. Can you think of a conflict that has not in some way flowed from a lack of understanding or misunderstanding? Whether the conflict is little or large, the cause is not a mystery, but an aggregate of small misunderstandings accumulated over time.
If conflicts and misunderstandings are not tackled, disturbing emotions such as anger, hatred, and attachment, lead to confusion. And where does confusion lead? To wars of words, to physical conflict.
Karmapa Trinley Thaye Dorje