Zen Mind Beginners Mind - Books that changed our lives

In my e-mail feed there was a post from NPR about a new series they were running where authors, critics, and others write about going back to books from their past that changed their lives.

This idea has stayed with me and I have been thinking about the many many books that changed my life, and about books in general. Over the past couple of years, I have donated thousands of books, the major part of my personal library to the Free Books Project because I am losing my vision to Fuch's Dystrophy and reading is too hard for me now. There was no point in holding on to something I could no longer use, so I gave them away.

I haven't gone back to many books over the years anyhow because there are always new ones and because my interests change as my life changes. But a book sprange into my mind last Sunday during discussion hour at my Friends Meeting in Woodbury and I ordered it from amazon. Of course, I can't read it, so I am going to give it away, but I have two forms of borrowing audio books and I am listening to it on audio book: Hoopla (a free app from my library, and audible, a 'pay for app' that I can use on my phone or laptop.)

Every night, I listen to audio books for about an hour. Usually, I listen to light weight entertainment, like someone teling me a story. Sometimes, I dip into something deeper or more challenging, such as "Man-Up" by Cynthia Miller.

I first encountered Zen Mind Beginner's Mind in 1970. It is a series of lectures given by Zen teacher Suzuki and it was the book that brought popular attention to Buddhism to the counterculture in the US. All the young peope my ex-husband and I knew back in our hippy days were reading it and I suppose our dip into drug culture via smoking marijuana and taking LSD was the inspiration for learning more about our minds and thinking. I believe at the time there was another book called "The Doors to Perception" and we all became aware of both 'perception' and that it could be observed and altered. We felt it drug induced but we wanted to find it naturally.

This isn't such an odd thing, even today, when even the most mainstream people regularly alter their perception with sedatives, anti-depressants, and of course, the most popular one of all, alcohol. Also, at present, November 2025, in the majority of the states where marijuana is legal there are almost as many dispensaries as there are pharmacies or convenience stores. My little town has THREE!

My fist introduction to Zen Buddhism and indeed, the book, "Zen Mind Beginner's Mind" was baffling and even confounding, Everything seemed to contradict everything else, which, I realized in time, was part of the understanding because it is teaching us how to struggle with the most subtle of mind tricks - intellectualizing.

I read so many books on Zen Meditation, in particular, in the beginning, Jack Kornfeld, Phd, psychologist and Zen teacher. After the Englightment, the Laundry, was one of his best sellers. My goal, always, was to release myself from enslavement to moods, to understand more about how my mind was blown hither and yond and to release myself from captivity in the more negative and paintful experiences. I understand now that there is no escape from these normal experiences of ife in the corporeal world, but you can shorten the duration of the suffering when you can understand that, like the weather, it is a passing field of forces.

It seems to me that this is the most essential struggle of our existence. People die every day, every hour, because they can't endure the emotional pain of various states. They become drug addicts, alcoholics, even suicides because they can't find escape from the more painful states of mind such as depression.

Along with millions of other peopke I hoped that Zen Meditation offered a route into understanding and perhaps controlling these states of mind.

What I eventually discovered was that Pema Chodrin was the guide for me. She is an abbot and Zen teacher in Gumpo Abby in Canada, and I have read every book she has written and they, along with her cd's saved my life during the most emotionally and mentally painful period of my life. I bought a 5 cd changer, for those too young to remember, a music/media player that you could load 5 cd's onto for continuous playing - used before the cell phone was invented. At night when I couldn't sleep, I would load her cd's and her soothing voice and simplified, uncluttered and clear lectures would calm the storm of suffering in my heart and mind and lead me out of the prison.

Listening to the Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, reminds me of how much it sounds like Gobbledy Gook. In fact it is what reminded me of that old phrase Gobbledy Gook. It seems to me that it ties as many knots as it unravels. But now, at age 80, and after years and years of reading and thinking and studying and meditation, I understand a little more easily what Suzuki is talking about and how he is talking about it.

One thing that both confounded and infuriated me and stuck inmind for years for pondering was the concept that our minds "Make the world" = surely not - certainly the world is empirically existing regardless of our minds. But over time, I came to understnd how our developed filters change and alter and translate the world, "Perceive it" and make something out of it that we come believe is the whole thing, the real thing, but it is, in fact, a creation.

Recently I saw a marvelous science program on how the brain works. Simply, the idea that caught my attention was that we have a limited and unique and individual ability to take in the information about the world. We know that by simple things such as how our dogs can smell things beyound the abilities ofour olfactory sense, and cats can see things we can't see, and other creatures can percieve sensory information unavailable to us, so we know there is more going on out there than we can take in. Our brains take in what they can and then fabricate the rest to make a complete picture.

That's how we "make the world." Finally I get it, and what's more, from reading all the Zen books, I actually understand it as well. Of course that is only the barest inkling in the challenge of using that information to 'control' our minds and emotions.

Composure has become something I identify as an admirable trait. I am not a terribley skilled practitioner of it, but I have known people who were and I have admired them. It has taken a lifetime to identify what that trait was that I admired in those folks, my Godfather Neal Schmidt had it, my Grandfather Joseph Lyons had it, Joyce Connelly, a volunteer from Red Bank Battlefield had it. These people could demonstrate composure under the most stressful of situations. How did they get it? They seemed to be gifted with more of it than most people. Joyce was always AWARE; when we had meetings of the volunteers and staff at Red Bank Battlefield, say the Book Readers' Club, Joyce was so AWARE of everyone, the forces driving them and all they were saying, and though she had an idea and a book to suggest that she found especially meaningful, she could wait patiently, make her case in a composed and calm manner, and accept the decision of the group with calm acceptance. I remeber the book she really wanted us to read "Escaped and Never Caught" the story of Ona Judge, a woman enslaved to Martha Washington. I immediately bought the book that Joyce recommended, the group chose a different book, a book about the First Rhode Island Regiment. The group, at that time, was composed by mainly men, so it wasn't surprising that they should choose a military title over one about a woman and a slave. Nonetheless, Joyce respected me and we formed a friendship over my choice of that book and our discussions about it later. In a very real sense, I loved Joyce and admired her. Joyce Connelly died from cancer.

So, I have always wanted to understand states of mind, mind and others, and to learn more about the mechanisms that drive them. I wanted to be released from the more painful and embarrassing ones and to acquire a better practice of the more admirable ones, liek composure. So I read Zen Buddhism, and books on psychology, and joined the Quakers! To me, The best Quaker book on this topic was Rex Ambler's pamphlet put out by the Pendle Hill Quaker publisher, The Early Mysicism of Quakers. The books describes how they discovered and practiced meditation and then goes on to compare it to various forms of phsychology that use meditation techniques to help people understand and work to unravel the snares in which they find themselves caught.

The most recentl insight that I have discoverd from a New Years Resolution offered by an article in the New York Times, was to take note of when I feel happy. Yesterday, I was pulling out of my drive way when the Fed Ex delivery van was pulling up to the curb. The delivery man handed me my package of 80th Birthday photograhs which I had printed by Walgreens Pharmacy photo department. I was thrilled to have them to take to lunch with me. I got to the corner of the street and a group of about 15 men women and children were engaged in a Christmas decorating party on the lawn of a house and they all waved happily to me, and I experienced a fireworks of happiness. Zen has taught me, however, that this too is a transient state, so enjoy it an dlet it go. You can't chase that state, any more than you could be excited by an array of fireworks that never burned out or stopped. Zen Mind Beginner's Mind wasn't the best, but it was the first and it was the KeY to understanding the mystery of existence for me.

Happy Trails! and Calm seas.

as always, if you wish to correspond, please use my e-mail because 'comments' in blogspot is polluted by spam. >p/> wrightj45@yahoo.com