Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Three of the ideas you’ll keep

The Clif summary of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind pulls out 7 insights. Here are the first three.

1. Keep a beginner's mind: in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few. Drop the 'I already know this' reflex and meet familiar things as if for the first time.
2. Practice for its own sake, not for a result. Zazen (sitting meditation) is not a means to enlightenment later, it IS the expression of awakeness now, so let go of chasing outcomes.
3. Use breathing as your anchor. Watch the breath move in and out and notice that the self is just 'a swinging door' that opens and closes, dissolving the hard line between you and the world.

The other 4 — and the full 9-minute summary — are in the app.

What’s inside: 9 chapters

The whole summary runs about 9 minutes, read or listened to.

1. Beginner's Mind: The Whole Book in Two Words
2. Posture: Sit Like You Mean It
3. Breathing and the Swinging Door
4. Control by Giving the Cow a Bigger Pasture
5. Mind Waves and Mind Weeds
6. No Trace: Burn Completely Like a Clean Fire
7. Right Effort and Nothing Special
8. Repetition, Constancy, and the Single-Minded Way
9. Naturalness, Emptiness, and No Dualism