"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." - Shunryo Suzuki-Roshi
There are few things more beneficial in terms of both the development of humility and the development of a sense of humor than being a beginner. You walk into a classroom and leave all of who you are and what you have convinced yourself along the Way that you know at the door. Once inside the room, you learn very quickly that you are a beginner. Again. And I don't know about you guys, but for me that's really a delightful experience. I am taking a Spanish class. A beginner's Spanish class. Even though I lived close to the Mexican border for many years, my interest in and mastery of the Spanish language was pretty much limited to asking for a cervesa or for the servicios. Fortunately those two terms kinda go together, so I got by all these years without having to know more. But now I find myself living in Spain, and having to come up to speed on Spanish fairly quickly, in order to do ordinary things like get a phone line and ADSL installed, buy food, and basically just live. So I signed up for a short, intensive course here in Sitges during the mornings, and it's just been a wonderful experience in Beginner's Mind. There are only six people in the class -- myself and my best friend (American), three young Germans (two au pairs and a fellow who does tech support for H-P), and an English woman who has lived here for two years and is just now getting around to learning Spanish. It's been a non-stop laugh fest. We all make such *stupid* mistakes -- ALL of us -- that there is simply no room in the classroom for ego, only laughter. And the laughter can be over the silliest things. The other day we were having a discussion about what kinds of peliculas we like to watch. The broken Spanish was flying around the table, but I noticed that my friend Laurel was sitting there with a puzzled expression on her face, not contributing. Well, it turns out that she hadn't caught the definition of the word peliculas (movies), and was trying to map it to the only cognate word she could think of from French, pelicule. And that means dandruff. So she was sitting there the whole time we were talking, thinking that we were having a lively and animated discussion about which kinds of dandruff we like to watch. Then there was the morning we discussed food, and the topic segued from types of meats (carnes) to types of vegetables (verduras). Nicole, the cute German au pair, missed the segue, so when the word alcachofas came up, she got the same puzzled expression on her face. A few people in the room didn't know what the term meant (artichokes), so the teacher was trying to describe them in beginner's Spanish. Nicole was sitting there looking more and more puzzled, because (as it turns out) she was trying to imagine what kind of animal was the source of a foodstuff that was green and had all sorts of spiky things all over it and that you ate by pulling off pieces of it with your fingers. She was imagining galloping herds of alcachofas, probably tended by alcachofaboys riding horses and wearing gaucho hats. The merriment just doesn't stop, and that makes the learning process easy. It's almost as if the first step *to* learning easily is to realize that you are an absolute beginner, and that thus it is permissible to make mistakes, to allow others to laugh at you when you make those mistakes, and to join in the laughter and laugh at yourself when you make the mistakes. Oh, that we all had more of that same Beginner's Mind more of the time in other discussions...
