Innocence: Beginner’s Mind and Heart
Smile to the Mind and Heart
The photo shows a bright yellow ball with a smiley face painted on it that you might throw to someone in a friendly game of catch. It is a literal Qi Ball. Photo by Chaitanya Pillala on Unsplash.
What is Beginner’s Mind and Heart?
When you are learning anything new, having a Beginner’s Mind can be very helpful. By comparison, an Expert’s Mind is full of information, theories, and judgments. The Expert needs to let go of these things to be able to see something they already know with fresh eyes. Tai Chi Grandmaster Chen Xiaowang talks about your teacup being empty or full when it comes to being receptive to his teaching. Beginner’s Mind means the teacup is empty and receptive, and you can see, hear, and experience things as if for the first time with Beginner’s Mind. The Experts can empty their cups anytime and appreciate fresh tea, but it takes awareness and commitment to consciously empty the cup and be ready at the right moment to see things anew. You have to want to accept a new idea. Once you know things, being able to consider and accept new ideas requires discipline over your own mind, which takes will, a little self-knowledge and introspection.
These are acts of mind.
There is also such thing as Beginner’s Heart. Poet Astrologer Rob Brezsny has a beautiful description of Beginner’s Heart (read about it here). Beginner’s Heart is about innocence and purity. With a Beginner’s Heart, there is a quality of willingness that springs forth out of something that is different from analysis and calculation. It is your Beginner’s Heart that tells you to keep going and try again even though there is a chance of failure or loss or annoyance, as when you keep loving someone even after they have let you down or you have gotten to know their quirks. The Beginner’s Heart has an innocence that comes from a basic sense of goodness within. But at the same time, this stance of acceptance is not passive. A Beginner’s Heart is also willing to disentangle from affliction and addiction in self and others in order to restore life’s original and primordial state of goodness and purity.
The Essence You are Born With
This innocent and primordial state is something we are born with, and I believe is always there. Even having a sense of losing or forgetting your innocence happens innocently. That’s the nature of innocence and the human experience. Everyone is innocent underneath the appearances, even the killers and sinners, if we think of innocence as your essence as a human being, the carbon-based lifeform, and the sheer fact that you were born. There is a preciousness to every human life. What we do with the precious innocence is another matter; it is a human thing to create either heaven or hell on earth for yourself and others. We are that free. Because a human life starts out pristine and full of potential, there is a great opportunity, a chance, to take care of it throughout.
Thus, the teaching is that there are two kinds of innocence. Master Hua-Ching Ni speaks to this in his book I Ching: The Book of Changes and the Unchanging Truth, which contains commentary on the 64 Hexagrams of the I Ching, where each Hexagram represents a state of being or Qi. In the commentary for Hexagram 25, Innocence, Master Ni writes that there are two kinds of innocence. There is innocence without information, and there is innocence with information.
The Innocence Without Information
The first kind of innocence is that of a child. Wide-eyed and excited for life, a child’s innocence is pure beginner’s mind, the blank slate unencumbered by information. We are all born with this. Children are honest, free, and hopeful and expectant of something good. Innocent children can also be so free as to feel free to pull the wings off insects just to see what happens. It can be shocking to see little ones do this. Being innocent does not mean there is no need for guidance. Innocence needs guidance. And this little innocent being is vulnerable, too. The innocence of a child is precisely the thing that can make a child say yes to a stranger with ill intent or make that child walk straight into a dangerous situation, like the deep end of the pool or a busy city street. Every child learns lessons here in Earth School, and the learning does not have to be harsh, but often it is. When life happens, that means there are consequences for actions, and sometimes these are hard knocks. Encountering the freedom and actions of others is the next level of this dynamic, and that basically starts a big chain reaction for the rest of a child’s life. There are lessons, learnings, and traumas, and all of these are formative. This is what it means to gain experience and to undergo conditioning, and as the conditioning is happening, with every interaction and transaction and event, the innocence of the child is forgotten and replaced with strategies for staying alive, controlling outcomes, and getting ahead. For many, the conditioning, some of it useful, now replaces the innocence. But the innocence is still there.
A child’s innocence is the precious part of the child that needs protecting. But if innocence is always present, this innocence, this precious sense of innate goodness and purity, is also that part of you that always needs protecting as well. Always.
The Innocence With Information
So, the second kind of innocence is innocence with information, which means innocence that is present when there is also ample life experience, or we can think of it as “innocence that knows.” I believe this is the innocence that survives all the conditioning and experience, some of it harsh, and still finds life and living worthwhile, still has a soft capacity to love and be surprised and delighted by life. After years and years of living, it is no small feat to still have this soft capacity. Master Ni calls the person who has accomplished this soft capacity in the face of life experience, the sage. The sage is basically a person who has gone through life and had experiences and learned useful things. Wisdom, experience, and resilience result, and these form the foundation of a life where that inborn goodness can shine through. In the sage, the ability to feel awe and to give and receive love and still be wise has mysteriously been carefully and successfully protected throughout the sage’s life. This is a grace that is not all the doing of the sage on their own, but an outcome of the collective protection around them as well as the sage’s lifetime commitment to principles that can be named: Life, Truth, Love, Justice, Growth, Wisdom, Soul, and Purity.
In the sage’s life, of course there is personal history, and there are scars and impressions, but there is also the grace of understanding. Some of those impressions formed at an early age and still remain. The sage has done the work and knows about these impressions, wounds, and biases and keeps these things in mind when interacting with life and planning the day. The sage is self-aware and has engaged in self-healing, and so can readily tap into a sense of innocence of not just themselves but of others as well. There is a willingness to simply play and exist in the mystery and the freedom and the chaos of existence just as it is. Not fighting traffic and chaos but choosing to harmonize with it as much as possible. This takes practice. The sage is willing to try again and to have patience with the unfolding of events and so does not manipulate or control but maybe guides things and witnesses without attachment to particular outcomes. Getting to know people, things, and processes takes time, and the sage knows this and humbly sacrifices things like wanting to make a point or being right or being well-thought of on a regular basis. The sage may appear foolish or unwise, stupid, and maybe even unevolved to others at times, but this does not change the sage’s commitment to what is called de, or The Way, or what may translate simply as virtue.
Mind and Heart: Always Together
So, this second kind of innocence maps to Beginner’s Mind and Heart together in that there is a willingness to let go of concepts readily while wading out into uncertainty on a regular basis and simultaneously attempting to maintain a commitment to virtue, truth, honesty, love, wisdom, and freedom. The sage knows that there is vastness, uncertainty, and mystery everywhere: in the body, the mind, in the world, in relationships, events, other people. But knowing this is a lifelong education, and staying humble and loving while receiving this education is a way to practice Beginner’s Mind and Beginner’s Heart. This is the practice that can be done in ordinary life, and it is the practice of living by principle, taking that moment to pause at times, rather than letting thoughts, emotions or feelings alone dictate actions or choice of words in the heat of the moment. The sage knows there is enough time to consider things and make a move. Sometimes that means doing nothing and letting things pass. Sometimes that means taking swift and clear action. Not everyone will understand or even like the sage. But that is not the goal. A sage does not seek to be liked and understood as much as they seek understanding.
It is never finished, but goodness is always present.
“Poem: The Big Encouragement
Just because you can brush it off or wait it out, doesn’t mean you should.
Take action, yes
Give a damn
But sometimes
Sometimes truly and singly
In a moment of grace and quiet in between moments try to embrace the not knowing, and let life go where it needs to go.
Controlling gets tedious
And boring.
Control is a lie
Understanding is a gift
Let go and let go
And let go
As many times as you need to
When the light completely darkens, you will either find yourself in a state of missing yourself no more than you missed yourself before you were born
or
you will have transitioned to yet another state of consciousness
Again
As so many times before
So why rage against the dying of the light?
For a moment, find peace in the dazzling dark
Sit, lie down, stay
relax
”Do your best and leave the rest”
To God, to nature, to providence, to time. Whatever.
And finally
just live ”