Beginner's Mind

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." 

                                                                            Shunryu Suzuki

I spent a lot of time in my studio this week.  For the first time in quite awhile, I had a window of opportunity to get in there and I was ready to roll up my sleeves.  However, once I got started, I just couldn’t seem to make anything happen!  All week long, everything I did felt forced, heavy-handed. There was simply no flow. 

But then on Saturday morning, I padded into my studio in my pajama’s with a cup of coffee, put on David Bowie’s new album and just began to play around.  While I worked, I also had a long conversation with a close friend of mine who was feeling down. Somehow the music, the morning sunlight and the ability to support a beloved friend, things began to unfold. Just like that.

Linda Povey
Beginner's Mind
6 x 6 inches
Mixed media and encaustic on paper
2013

Shoshin is a concept in Zen Buddhism that means "Beginner's Mind.” It refers to having an attitude of openness and a lack of preconceptions when studying any subject, just as a beginner would, even when studying at an advanced level. While I am certainly a beginner as a painter, this concept struck a deep chord within me.  Shunryu Suzuki, author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind wrote, “If your mind is empty it is always ready for anything. It is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." 

I realized that an important part of my painting practice is to not overthink what I am doing, to just let go of the outcome.  Suzuki wrote, “In the Beginner’s Mind there is no thought, ‘I have attained something,’ all self-centered thoughts limit our vast mind.  When we have no thought of achievement, no thought of self, we are true beginners and we can really learn something.”

Interestingly, the Beginner’s Mind painting began as a photograph I took in Valley Forge Park in January.  This is a vista I have enjoyed almost daily for over 20 years.  Throughout each miraculous season, or at different times of day, it is always evolving and fresh, yet somehow a constant comfort. The painting was my attempt to express how that line of trees looks and feels through my Beginner’s Mind. Open. Ready. Without expectation.

Valley Forge Park
January 2013

I invite you to take a few moments to listen to Peter Coyote narrate a few paragraphs from Shunryu Suzuki’s timeless and profound book. As I head back into the studio, and in other areas of my life, I'm going to try to practice this valuable Zen lesson.

Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind 

"Overview" and the Red-tailed Hawk

"If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit.  For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man.  All things are connected.”

                                                                                                                             

                                                                            Chief Seattle 

I was walking with my dog through Valley Forge Park when I came upon a Red-tailed Hawk. He was a beauty. Fully mature, I could see the sunlight shining through his red tail feathers as he sat perched on the branch of a tree. I stopped and it appeared he was staring down at me. My walking companion, Cody, was running around chasing leaves making quite a racket but even so, the hawk continued to peer down, studying me for what seemed a lifetime.

An encounter in the Park

A friend of mine, a healer and Shaman, once told me the Red-tailed Hawk might be my Animal Spirit. She said any animal that appears in your life with regularity is visiting to share some kind of message. Last summer, a family of Red-tailed Hawks nested near our home. I saw them almost daily, riding the thermals above our hollow, even once catching sight of the youngsters locking talons in mid-air.

The Red Eagle

The Pueblo Indians referred to these beautiful creatures as “red eagles,” high flyers that could see the Earth clearly from great heights due to their exceptional vision. The Native Americans believed their acute eyesight (four times stronger than man’s) enabled them to see what the future held as they soared unseen currents in the sky. They credited the red eagle for being a Visionary, able to see the larger perspective and to discern what is most important.   

The only known picture of Chief Seattle,  1864

Chief Seattle, leader of the Duwamish tribe, for which the Washington city gets its name, believed: “Whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man.”  On December 7, 1972, a crew member of Apollo 17 took the famous “Blue Marble” photograph of the Earth. While other shots of the Earth became available as early as 1967, this was the first time our planet was photographed in its entirety, and is considered the most widely distributed photograph in human history.  

Blue Marble, December 7, 1972 Apollo 17

A short film called Overview was just released in February chronicling the experience of the astronauts in space. Based on the term coined by Frank White in 1987, “The Overview Effect” is the cognitive shift in awareness reported by some astronauts while viewing the Earth from orbit or the lunar surface. The astronauts share their awe-inspiring, and sometimes life-altering experience, of seeing our planet from a cosmic perspective. 

Aurora Australis

This shift in perspective came to the men and women of the Apollo missions and the International Space Station crews that followed, with the profound recognition of how indescribably beautiful, vital and fragile our planet truly is, with “nothing but a thin layer of atmosphere protecting us from the certain death of space.” Their experiences, symbolized by the Vision of the Red-tailed Hawk, describe a unique context that comes with being “above it all,” as opposed to being “among it.”

Brazil from Space

Interestingly, the “Blue Marble’” photograph was almost an afterthought, with a crew member randomly grabbing an unpacked Hasselblad and taking the shot. Our “race to space,” like so many things we humans do, was so external and outward facing, we didn’t realize until much later that the opportunity to look back at ourselves might have been the most important reason for going there in the first place.

My recent visit with the Red-tailed Hawk has been an invitation to look back at myself with a greater perspective. What is most important to me now?  How do I want to live?  What can I contribute?

The Bahamas from Space

As spring approaches, it will soon be time to get back into my summer studio. I am thinking about exploring these emerging themes in my artwork: How can the objectivity of distance create a greater knowledge, and intimacy, with myself?

I invite my readers to watch the film Overview, and welcome you to share any comments or reflections about “The Overview Effect” in your own life.

                            “The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.”

                                                                                                                                          Buddha