On weekdays that I don’t have class I like to go home to my parent’s house and hang out with my dog. My parents both work during the day, so my yellow lab Sandy is home alone for 8 hours. I figure she probably gets lonely, so I like to keep her company. She does the same for me.
Sometimes when it’s nice, I’ll go out into the backyard and sit on the steps of my deck to read or do homework. Usually I don’t read or do homework. Instead, I end up sitting there and staring off into space. Sandy always comes and sits down next to me. Together we sit and and think about things; about moving to Greece and working in a cafe, about why colorful leaves falling to the ground can be so beautiful and so calming, about how hours of my life can disappear without notice when I'm just sitting. (I don’t actually know what the dog thinks about.)
An interesting thing happened a few weeks ago as I was sitting outside with Sandy. There was a huge gust of wind and it spooked her. She was startled. She looked around to see where the force came from, turned her head from side to side with an big brown eyes and inquisitive look that sometimes only an old dog can display, and then put her head back down on her paws with furrowed brows. I’m pretty sure a gust of wind blew her mind.
It’s funny how dogs can be so fascinated by the world. She will put her nose to the ground and walk around my backyard for hours just exploring, seeing what there is to be seen. She has no real preconceptions; there are no axioms in her existence. There is only the moment - the smells of the grass, the noise of birds chirping, the feel of my hand as I pet her. She is like a toddler constantly fascinated by the world; she has a beginners mind.
The beginners mind is an idea, I think officially coined in Zen Buddhism, of existing in a completely free state; to be open and eager to see that which the world and ideas have to offer. To have a beginners mind is to be able to notice things as they are - how the air smells so sweet after a spring shower, how the damp leaves stick on to the ground on a foggy fall day, how the horizon glows just as the first stars begin to appear. To have a beginners mind is to find fascination in life itself; it is a realization of how beautiful and strange each moment truly is.
Beginners mind is this mindset in which the best learning can be done. Without preconceptions you are able to notice new things, to see even the finest intricacies – you give yourself no limits. Too often increased knowledge and world experience results in personal barriers being placed, ideas being held too firmly.
My last post talked about creating a phenomenological disruption, a moment of true learning for my students. I think that cultivating the beginners mind in them is part of the same cause, its importance and life-value is just the same. I do not know how to bring them to this place – a place that I believe can only exist for short periods of time. However, I am almost positive of one thing – technology doesn’t help this cause.
Technology by definition is a medium – it takes information, images, and experiences and puts them on a screen. In my own mind I find this analogous to Plato’s own cave analogy: just as those inside the cave only see the shadows of images, of forms, unable to see that which truly is real outside in the light of day – the computer gives us but shadows of reality. I do not believe that we can truly seek, real knowledge, real experience, through a technological medium. It needs to be done through experience, through presence and dialogue. In the of work most philosophers I have read there seems to be a special place where communication, wisdom, and eros all intersect. (How nice it would be to study this for a living.) Though one could take a lifetime to try to consider this, perhaps it is also extremely simple: It takes two. It is only with another that you can seek true knowledge. Wisdom requires there to be dialogue and discussion, perspective and criticism. Yet, this best when the conversation is not limited, when the two entering it are completely comfortable and open, willing to attempt to understand the other, wanting to understand the other - there must be beginners mind. By this understanding, it seems that the type of relationship that is required for two to seek learning is one in which there is love. As Plato says, together two lovers seek wisdom, seek the highest form – that of beauty. One does not seek true wisdom and understanding with a laptop.
Technology is a useful tool. Sure, two can communicate with technology and search for wisdom. However, it is impossibly insignificant in the big picture. The importance lays not in the tools, but in the mindset of people themselves and the relationship between them.
