SHOSHIN: BEGINNER’S MIND
“The Empty Cup”
Day One; your first class. You’re wearing that fresh, new white gi with the perfect creases down the sleeves and the awkwardly bundled –together obi around the waist. During kihon (basics), you come to the startling realization that despite graduating from preschool, you’ve neglected to remember which foot is left and which one is right in the heat of the moment. Yes, you do have to remove your partner’s grip from your wrist in self-defence practice, and no, you don’t need to apologize after. Your first kata is an awkward attempt to string together a pattern in an aching stance you may never have adopted before.
Yet, this is the most important class you’ll ever attend, as it is the first step in a lifelong journey. The path ahead is full of unique experience, physical strengthening, spiritual enrichment, and enough acquired knowledge to fill volumes. After some years, your training will have led to the title of black belt. If Day One in the dojo is the start of serious training in the martial ways, then the black belt level is surely the beginning of it.
So why try and go back to a beginner state?
Shoshin, or “beginner’s mind”, is a concept far less literal than it is metaphysical, not to be confused with simply forgetting technique. Bruce Lee, the most famed martial artist of the twentieth century, articulated and simplified for a western society this understanding that was apparent to Eastern scholars and budoka (students of martial ways) for centuries before.
“If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot…be water, my friend.”
What he was implying is how adaptable a pliant mind can be. It should not assume or anticipate, hold prejudice or bias. To be so entrenched in a single understanding of something is to deny the one constant in this world; change. The attitude to adopt in shoshin is to approach things with an open mind and open heart, just like the humble beginner did when they showed up and started training. That is why in classical karate, we don no other gi but an uncoloured one. No other shade or colour exemplifies humility and modesty as white does. It is like a blank canvas, on which the paints and pastels of our art are always brushed but never appear.
Each student that enters the dojo with a beginner’s mind comes from a different life from the next. They are of various ages, body compositions, disabilities, life experiences, and upbringings, but take their first class all the same. Each time you enter the dojo, do so with shoshin. Bow and proceed as if it was your first class ever. Consider that even though you become older each day, you become newer. Emulate the same emotions you felt that first time you shuffled awkwardly on the dojo floor, not feelings of inadequacy, but the spirit of learning that brought you there.
Shoshin may be considered a treasure of practice. It is a state of being that is revered but can’t be explained or articulated by those who have not trained in a long-term way of life. To train, but constantly recreate oneself, is even touched upon by another famous icon in western cinema:
“You must unlearn what you have learned”
– Yoda
Without shoshin, we cannot reach further ideals; bushin, the warrior mind, and mushin...no mind. This will be touched upon later when we discuss one of the most famed books in Japanese swordsmanship, Go Rin no Sho, or The Book of Five Rings.
Until next time,