Originally Posted by tariki

I was just drifting around the forum yesterday and happened to see this thread and it just seemed to give my mind a nudge. It sent my memory back to my very first posting on a Buddhist forum, when I interrupted a profound discussion that was taking place between a couple of Zens, based upon Shunryu Suzuki’s book “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” from which I believe the original quote comes from. I remember at the time that I experienced just a little trepidation in wading in, as I had always found that book strangely boring and had never managed to get beyond page twenty. At the time I realised that I would either have to say just that or remain forever in chains, afraid to speak my mind! Well. I spoke it…………………….and my words, as you can imagine, went down like a lead balloon and I was in all probability dismissed by many on the forum to the Buddhist wastelands, though all were far too polite to say so! Anyway, I seem to be waffling.

For me, the “expert” mind is the mind of a forever-fixed definitive opinion. Opinions are not too bad in themselves but when we become stuck in them and they become unquestioned we seem to lose forever a form of childlike innocence that is always open to experience. This can be understood and explained by the simple way we learn and assimilate knowledge………………..We see an article in a newspaper - as an example - that tells us that a Penny Black stamp was sold at auction for two hundred pounds. “And how much is a Penny Black worth?” “Oh!” says the expert mind, “two hundred pounds!” A few days later we might read that a joined set of four Penny Black’s sold for a thousand pounds. Our answer to the question would then become something like “Oh, depends on whether they are single or in sets”. THEN, later again, we read that a Penny Black in mint condition sold for £500. Well, I won’t labour the point – I possibly already have! – but that’s how it goes. Eventually I suppose the one with “beginner’s mind” will say upon being asked the value, “show it to me” and await reality to strike!!

So knowledge and opinions are not wrong in themselves, and there is a true sense in which we need to seek and gain greater knowledge, but it just seems to me that it needs to be a path towards some sort of “dropping” of opinion (even “ego”?) and allowing Reality-as-is to Be. When the opinions become fixed they have the potential to create barriers between people.

This all seems to have affinities with the Middle Way of Buddhism, of which Thomas Merton said……………..”It was the Buddha’s aim not to give a ‘final’ speculative answer but to be free from all theories and to know, by experience……………he wanted not a third position lying between two extremes but a no-position that supersedes them both. This is the Middle Way”

Anyway, this is all my opinion………………….and I’m sticking to it!