Can we look at all the aspects of our lives with this mind, just open to see what there is to see? I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time doing that. I have a lot of habits of mind – I think most of us do. Children begin to lose that innocent quality after a while, and soon they want to be “the one who knows.” We all want to be the one who knows. But if we decide we “know” something, we are not open to other possibilities anymore. And that’s a shame. We lose something very vital in our life when it’s more important to us to be “one who knows” than it is to be awake to what’s happening. We get disappointed because we expect one thing, and it doesn’t happen quite like that. The very nature of beginner’s mind is not knowing in a certain way, not being an expert. As Suzuki Roshi said in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the experts there are few.” As an expert, you’ve already got it figured out, so you don’t need to pay attention to what’s happening. Pity.
Not always so
How can we cultivate this mind that is free to just be awake? In just sitting, in sitting and noticing the busyness of our mind and all of the fixed views that we carry. Once we notice the fixed views that we are carrying around with us, the preconceptions that we are carrying around with us, then it is possible for us to let them go and say, “Well, maybe so, maybe not.” Suzuki Roshi once said, “The essence of Zen is ‘Not Always So’. “Not always so.” It’s a good little phrase to carry around when you’re sure. It gives you an opportunity to look again more carefully and see what other possibilities there might be in the situation.
Blanche Hartman, Lecture on Beginners Mind
You might try to cultivate your own beginner’s mind in your daily life as an experiment. Next time you see somebody who is familiar to you, ask yourself if you are seeing this person with fresh eyes, as he or she really is, or if you are only seeing the reflection of your own thoughts about this person. Try it with your children, your spouse, your friends and co-workers, with your dog or cat if you have one. Try it with problems when they arise. Try it when you are outdoors in nature. Are you able to see the sky, the stars, the trees and the water and the stones, and really see them as they are right now with a clear and uncluttered mind? Or are you actually only seeing them through the veil of your own thoughts and opinions?
When we see through our negative story, what we have left is the truth. That is why the practice of letting go of our story is extremely liberating and leads to great spaciousness and joy. Whenever I’m suffering or get confused, one of my main personal practices is to simply ask myself, “What story am I believing right now?” The moment I ask this, it allows me to see the emptiness of the thought and let go of the story. I’m out of my prison and can see things from a more spacious perspective. Thoughts are as real as we believe them to be or as empty as we see them to be. You may find, as I do, that using this reflection is an effective way to free the mind of the tyranny of negative thinking.
A good part of our automatic thinking is negative. Discontent comes naturally to us. Kids are discontented with their parents, parents are discontented with their teenagers, we are all discontented with our weight, and the prevalence of aesthetic surgery points to our discontent with the way we look. It is as if the brain is wired for discontent. With mindfulness we can become aware of this tendency. I remember distinctly the first time I became aware of the habit of negative thinking. I was at a staff meeting in work. All of a sudden, I noticed that I had a negative mental comment about everyone who spoke. Either he was incompetent, or he kept saying the same useless things, or he did not really understand the problem…Then a light bulb went on: Maybe the problems were in my mind rather than out there. Maybe I had a problem accepting things as they are, and people as they are. 
