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...
