I was talking with friends today about the Zen concept of "Beginner's Mind" - where one needs to empty one's mind of extraneous things to be able to make space to learn new things. This is always easier said than done, as we also need to capture and learn from our experiences and not just start every task afresh.
To quote Abbess Zenkei Blanche Hartman
"Beginner's mind is Zen practice in action. It is the mind that is innocent of preconceptions and expectations, judgements and prejudices. Beginner's mind is just present to explore and observe and see "things as-it-is." I think of beginner's mind as the mind that faces life like a small child, full of curiosity and wonder and amazement. "I wonder what this is? I wonder what that is? I wonder what this means?" Without approaching things with a fixed point of view or a prior judgement, just asking "what is it?"
In discussion, it struck me that this is concept could also be illustrated with a parallel in computer storage. It can take terabytes to store every single data point - but maybe only kilobytes to store the rules and principles that they illustrate.
So, one way to add prior understanding to "beginner's mind" is also to continuously seek clarity on rules and principles rather than try to remember facts and figures ...
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