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any people see beginners as incompetents who elbow their way into places where they don’t belong, with the audacity of expecting success on a grand scale. I would like to make the case for people who apply their beginner’s minds to writing. But why would a beginner’s mind bring anything special to the table in any endeavor? To answer that, I would like to remind the reader of an old Chinese story about a man who invited a former professor to have lunch with him, ostensibly to celebrate his success in life five years after graduation and the lessons he had learned along the way. As the former student had done very well financially, he had expected the professor to be impressed with him and smother him with praise. The former student bragged about his great business decisions and clever navigation of the stock market. This was a way for the former student to show the professor, who he felt had not given him enough praise, how wrong she was about him while he was her student. Before the meal arrived, they ordered tea, and the professor volunteered to pour it. After she began to pour the tea, she filled his cup and continued to pour until it overflowed. The student was upset; thinking that inviting the professor was a mistake. The professor asked him to explain why he was upset, as she was demonstrating a valuable lesson for him.
The student was at a loss to answer, so she stated that, like the overflowing cup, the former student had become so full of his own knowledge, opinions, and what he had to say that he was unable to accept any new knowledge or lessons. He had started to coast in life and enjoy his good fortune and the fruits of his labor before gaining any wisdom from living or changing his old attitudes.
From the professor’s demonstration, the student learned a valuable lesson; that you must approach knowledge and life as an empty cup, ready to take in new knowledge and accept that you don’t know everything, nor will you ever. This is what I mean by a beginner’s mind.From the professor’s demonstration, the student learned a valuable lesson; that you must approach knowledge and life as an empty cup, ready to take in new knowledge and accept that you don’t know everything, nor will you ever. This is what I mean by a beginner’s mind.
Long ago, I attended a gathering of spiritualists and asked for advice about possibly writing as a career.
I was told that I was unlikely to achieve success because I was a young soul. The speaker admonished me for my audacity to approach writing as a possible career. He was proud of his old soul and his standing in the community, having attained an impressive title and received a large salary. My beginner’s mind was a questioning mind and he resented being questioned about any knowledge that he had long before learned by rote and memorized as a set of stock answers. After all, I was only a neophyte, and he was an unassailable tower of strength. In the end, I never gave up my dream of someday becoming a writer.
Here I am.
