“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few”
Shunryu Suzuki
Aging, like many things in life, is a double-edged sword. No, I do not mean the physical aspects of aging, as frustrating as that can be. Instead, I mean that the psychology of aging—how the brain’s pattern recognition systems evolve—comes with pros and cons.
These are the categories and heuristics that we form and continually update in order to understand reality. We need these, and the positive thing is that we can sharpen them up as we age—we can make them more encompassing, consistent, and reliable.
It is as if we create a conceptual map of reality—a map of categories, personality types, expectations, intuitions about danger, etc.—which we use to offload our thinking and quickly analyze the world.
But there is a downside to this process. As we gain life experience and wisdom, we also lose something else: novelty.
In the presence of novelty, we are open to many possibilities. We have humility and awe at the uniqueness of what’s in front of us, and we don’t assume that it will fit into an already formed category. Novelty captures our attention to be fully in the present moment.
It gives us what the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki calls beginner’s mind.
Beginner’s Mind
Finding freedom is a recurring theme in meditation. This freedom can be expressed in many ways, but I think the most encompassing framing is a freedom from attachment.
It is our clinging to things—to views, desires, states of emotion, etc.—that begins the feedback loops of suffering. We wish for the external world to be a certain way, and we suffer when it is not. Or when we actually get what we want, we quickly realize that we are still clinging to yet more desire.
But as we let go of attachments, we find more freedom and less suffering. We see and accept reality as it is.
And beginner’s mind is such freedom—freedom from the past. It is the quality of seeing something as if for the first time. It means we no longer cling to our knowledge, experiences, opinions, or expectations. We have fresh awe and appreciation at the miracle of what’s in front of us.
“A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.”
Rachel Carson
As we age we learn and adapt. We form heuristics—rules of thumb—in order to more quickly analyze reality. We notice various causes and effects, and we expect the same patterns to continue. We also learn about different personality types and what to expect from them. And perhaps most important to our evolutionary past, we learn what assumptions will keep us out of danger.
This knowledge is not necessarily wrong, but it is also not free. In our clinging to mental models and assumptions, we often overlook the genuine uniqueness of the present moment. The mind wanders because it assumes that the present is probably more of the same old stuff.
But by definition, the present moment is always novel. It of course resembles patterns from the past, but every moment is still a brand new coming together of matter, energy, and consciousness. Beginner’s mind—and the meditation practices that cultivate it—help us to truly connect to this fact. We don’t allow the past to cloud the present. All of our past knowledge could be wrong, so we choose to see things as they are in the present with fresh eyes.
And when we see the present moment as a novelty, we give it our full attention. We cultivate a state of open-mindedness and appreciation toward reality.
Solving Problems
There is also a practical aspect to beginner’s mind. This is to say that even if the meditation/spiritual approach isn’t for you, beginner’s mind is a fantastic tool for solving problems.
We’ve all experienced the feeling of being stuck on a problem. This could be a life decision—do I take that new job or not—or it could be something creative like writing an article. Either way, a difficult problem will often leave us stuck in the weeds. The harder we push on it the less it budges.
So we might just give up for the night and get some rest. When we do this, something mysterious can happen the next day—as we dive back in, the solution often jumps out at us right away. How does this work?
“It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.”
John Steinbeck
The neuroscience of spindle events, bursts of fast brain activity during non-REM sleep, is one explanation for how this works. It also explains why Einstein is said to have taken many short naps throughout the day. Supposedly, he would fall asleep with a spoon in his hand and a metal plate underneath him to avoid deep sleep—as soon as his hand relaxed too much, the spoon hitting the plate would wake him up, hopefully to fresh ideas.
But subjectively speaking, the solution still arrives mysteriously. And often it’s a very simple solution that we just didn’t see before, something that was being blocked by our previous assumptions. While sleeping works for many people, for me ideas come most often while I’m walking outside.
In the spaciousness of walking and loosening my grip on the problem, a novel solution often comes to me. The wandering of the mind brought about a beginner’s mind that didn’t get stuck in the same ways. A lot of our past rules and knowledge are probably useful, but just one wrong assumption could be what keeps you stuck.
“When we are free from views, we are willing to learn. What we know for sure in this great turning universe is actually very limited.”
Jack Kornfield
This type of beginner’s mind is very similar to first-principles thinking, and it’s also why it can be so useful to ask someone else for help. They aren’t clouded and biased from spending hours on the problem, and as such solutions often come very quickly. Our previously published mental framework, The Null Hypothesis, is a similar tool for getting rid of these biases in order to properly solve a problem.
To practice beginner’s mind is to practice seeing a problem like your friend would. View the problem as if for the first time, because maybe you missed something the first time. When you aren’t boxed in, there will be many more possible solutions, and one of them might just be the right one.
Gratitude
Gratitude is another recurring theme in meditation, and it also intersects perfectly with beginner’s mind. This is because beginner’s mind cultivates a fresh and unique outlook on things, instead of taking them for granted.
Whether we are looking at our significant other or out in nature looking at a tree, beginner’s mind reminds us to slow down and see the details. We bring freshness to how we see, and that freshness invokes gratitude for the delicate intricacies of all things.
But this is not the default mode for our brains. The default mode is what is known in psychology as hedonic adaptation. Also known as the hedonic treadmill, it means that our bodies and minds always return to base levels of excitement and happiness. The first encounter with something pleasurable excites us the most, but in each subsequent encounter, the emotional impact on our nervous system is reduced.1
Hedonic adaptation is an especially easy trap to fall into in long-term relationships. In the beginning, you look deeply into a person’s eyes and can’t believe how special the moment is. It’s like time has stopped and you see the entire universe in their eyes. But then life happens—the body adapts, the mind adapts—and you stop seeing those moments with beginner’s mind. You tend to forget how precious it is.
So hedonic adaptation is a kind of glitch in our mind that robs us of our happiness and gratitude. But with a mindfulness practice, by specifically trying to cultivate beginner’s mind, we can get ahead of this glitch.
This is because gratitude is less about external reality and more about our internal framing. And with mindfulness, we can actually have some control over that internal framing. It’s a practice that we can get better at—breathing in the present moment and cultivating gratitude for where we are.
In a sense, beginner’s mind is learning to forget so that you can appreciate. Even if something is around you all of the time, you can always slow down and appreciate how special and temporary it is.
None of this is to say we should have beginner’s mind all of the time. We couldn’t survive if we always saw the world with such childlike innocence—often we should trust our knowledge and instincts.
Beginner’s mind is just a mental framework, a reminder, that encourages us to see the world with fresh eyes—to be present and allow time to slow down. Because sometimes you should be—and deserve to be—in awe and appreciation at the novelty of the present moment, whatever it is.
