In the forty years since its original publication, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind has become one of the great modern Zen classics, much beloved, much re-read, and much recommended as the best first book to read on Zen. It is an enduringly, endearingly clear collection of talks by Shunryu Suzuki (1905-1971), the Soto Zen master who founded the San Francisco Zen Center, Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, and Green Gulch Farm. This one book has been read and reread by generations of practitioners, with tattered and mended copies featured in hermit cabins, boardrooms, and by-the-cushions “all over this land.” And Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind is perhaps the only book in Banyen—other than Be Here Now and the I Ching—that has had the same cover for forty years! Its elegantly simple design has stood the test of time—and its price is generously low. It is, I think, the best and most beautiful book in the store…

Our “original mind” includes everything within itself. It is always rich and sufficient within itself. You should not lose your self-sufficient state of mind. This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. 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; in the expert’s mind there are few.... This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner.

This book is about how to practice Zen as a workable discipline and religion, about posture and breathing, about the basic attitudes and understanding that makes Zen practice possible, about non-duality, emptiness, and enlightenment. Here one begins to understand what Zen is really about. Every page breathes with the joy and simplicity that makes a liberated life possible.

We must have a beginner’s mind, free from possessing anything, a mind that knows everything is in flowing change. Nothing exists but momentarily in its present form and color. One thing flows into another and cannot be grasped. Before the rain stops we hear a bird. Even under the heavy snow we see snowdrops and some new growth. In the East I saw rhubarb already. In
Japan in the spring we eat cucumbers.

Also available by Suzuki Roshi are Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness and Not Always So.