About "Worst One", "Giving" and "Attitude toward Life and Importance of Continuing" of the book "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki

Today I'll write about the book "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki. This blog post is next to this article, "About "Beginner's Mind" and "Mind Weeds" of the book "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki”. I believe this book gives deep insight into our lives and help us live better. Let's dive into this book.

Worst One

I'll write about the chapter "The Marrow of Zen" at first. I want to pick up my favorite lines.

"When you are determined to practice zazen with the great mind of Buddha, you will find the worst horse is the most valuable one. In your very imperfections you will find the basis for your firm, way-seeking mind. Those who can sit perfectly physically usually take more time to obtain the true way of Zen, the actual feeling of Zen, the marrow of Zen. But those who find great difficulties in practicing Zen will find more meaning in it. So I think that sometimes the best horse may be the worst horse, and the worst horse can be the best one."

"We say, "A good father is not a good father." Do you understand? One who thinks he is a good father is not a good father; one who thinks he is a good husband is not a good husband. One who thinks he is one of the worst husbands may be a good one if he is always trying to be a good husband with a single-hearted effort."

These lines tell us the possibility of the worst one. So these passages give me power and encourage me. That's because I think I'm not the best horse. But so I could study music, art, history, literature, English a lot and practice vocal, piano, guitar and the way to make music a lot. And I continue to do so now, too. I often felt that I was worse than others. These feelings grew me. So I'm grateful to those experiences now. I'll think that I am worse than others from now on, too. At that time, I want to remember these passages. So if you ever felt something similar to me, these sentences will push your back.

Giving

In the chapter "God Giving" of this book, the author writes about giving. He writes like this.

"We are, in actuality, giving out everything. Moment after moment we are creating something, and this is the joy of our life."

And he goes on like this.

"When you give something you feel good, because at that time you feel at one with what you are giving. This is why it feels better to give than to take."

Indeed I think it feels better to give than to take. Listening to music and watching films and reading blogs are so fun. But to give my original music, films, blogs are more joyful. So I'm writing these blogs and making music and so on. I agree with the idea. And the author goes on like this.

"We should forget, day by day, what we have done; this is true non-attachment. And we should do something new. To do something new, of course we must know our past, and this is all right. But we should not keep holding onto anything we have done; we should only reflect on it. And we must have some idea of what we should do in the future. But the future is the future, the past is the past; now we should work on something new. This is our attitude, and how we should live in this world."

He says we should forget what we have done. This advice is unique. But it's not difficult to understand this idea. Indeed if we don't forget what we have done, we will be able to create something new and give others something new.

Attitude toward Life and Importance of Continuing

In the chapter "Mistakes in Practice", he writes about mistakes in Zen practice. This chapter is thought-provoking. He writes like this.

"Usually when you practice zazen, you become very idealistic, and you set up an ideal or goal which you strive to attain and fulfill. But as I have often said, this is absurd. When you are idealistic, you have some gaining idea within yourself; by the time you attain your ideal or goal, your gaining idea will create another ideal. So as long as your practice is based on a gaining idea, and you practice zazen in an idealistic way, you will have no time actually to attain your ideal. Moreover, you will be sacrificing the meat of your practice. Because your attainment is always ahead, you will always be sacrificing yourself now for some ideal in the future. You end up with nothing. This is absurd; it is not adequate practice at all. But even worse than this idealistic attitude is to practice zazen in competition with someone else. This is a poor, shabby kind of practice."

I understand this idea so much that it hurts. But I don't agree with this idea. Indeed if I set my goal and ideal in my mind, I might not attain my ideal now, and so I might sacrifice myself now. But I believe we can enjoy the way and the process to our ideal, goal, and dream. I sometimes feel painful by the gap between my real and my ideal. Nevertheless, I don't agree with his idea. That's because my experiences told me the joy of the process to our ideal, goal, and dream. If I haven't had my ideal, I couldn't complete my album "Timeless" and my music video "Island Girl". There were a lot of tough time to complete them. But every day, I was drawing my ideal. So when they finished, I trembled with joy I'd never experienced. Before I wrote the blog post about Michael Jackson's autobiography "Moonwalk". In that blog post, I wrote about Michael Jackson's attitude toward setting goals. He loved setting goals and achieving them, too. I sympathize with his idea. If you are interested in his view, I recommend you to check out the post "The things Michael Jackson's autobiography "Moonwalk" gives me 2/2".

But after these lines, he writes like this. And these lines are so inspirational.

"Even when you practice zazen alone, without a teacher, I think you will find some way to tell whether your practice is adequate or not. When you are tired of sitting, or when you are disgusted with your practice, you should recognize this as a warning signal. You become discouraged with your practice when your practice has been idealistic. You have some gaining idea in your practice, and it is not pure enough. It is when your practice is rather greedy that you become discouraged with it. So you should be grateful that you have a sign or warning signal to show you the weak point in your practice. At that time, forgetting all about your mistake and renewing your way, you can resume your original practice. "

Let's consider the "practice" as "our life" here. We don't have a teacher in our lives, and we can't find whether our life is adequate or not. But there are ways to find whether our life is adequate or not. If we feel tired or disgusted with our lives, these might be our signs or signals to change our way of living. I love this idea. Yes. It's okay to change the way to live our lives when we feel something wrong. And he goes like this.

"If you find some difficulty in your practice, that is the warning that you have some wrong idea, so you have to be careful. But do not give up your practice; continue it, knowing your weakness. Here there is no gaining idea. Here there is no fixed idea of attainment. You do not say, "This is enlightenment," or "That is not right practice." Even in wrong practice, when you realize it and continue, there is right practice. Our practice cannot be perfect, but without being discouraged by this, we should continue it. This is the secret of practice."

He emphasizes the importance of continuing here. I agree with his idea. If we continue to do something, we face some difficulties from a variety of perspectives. But at that time we can learn new important things. In my case, I love music. So I've worked on my music for such a long time. I've faced my vocal problem. At that time, it took a lot of time. But I overcame the problem by changing the way to train my vocal at last. I've faced plateaus of piano and guitar and English skills. At that time, I broke those plateaus by changing the way to practice them. I've encountered a lot of other problems and difficulties to continue to make my music. There were a lot of tough times to live. But I didn't want to stop making my music and continue to make music. So every time I faced the problem, I looked for other ways to proceed and finally found the way to proceed. So I say this with conviction.

"There are other ways to proceed. So don't give up and continue to do what you love."

Now I have some problems, too. But I believe I will find good other ways to overcome them. So if you have any difficulties now, you'll find your way to proceed at last.

Today I put the pen here. Soon I'll write about other parts of this book I haven't written yet. Thanks for your reading. And I hope you'll enjoy this post. Feel free to leave me a comment.