Beginning

Young children are beginners in just about everything, so when adults find themselves in the process of learning something new, of actually being beginners again, there’s a kind of revisiting that child-like state of vulnerability and confusion, as well as the excitement of the new, the unknown becoming known. Young children seem to take it for granted that just about everything coming up will be new (which is probably why they excite so easily) and for a long time they have to learn to deal with almost all of it as beginners. It’s no wonder that by eleven or twelve they so easily mutter: “Borrrring.”

The Zen master, Shunryu Suzuki, Roshi, who wrote Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, was asked by a student what he should do in his spare time. “Suzuki at first looked perplexed and repeated the phrase, ‘spare time?’ He then began to smile and repeated again ‘spare time’ and then began to laugh uproariously.”

(http://www.cuke.com/Cucumber%20Project/suzuki%20stories/stories.html)