by Kenn Duncan
A dharma talk given April, 2024

A practice mostly known from the Zen tradition, but making its way into the western practices, is the practice of not knowing. A not-knowing mind, or sometimes referred to as a beginner’s mind.

It is the mind that is innocent of preconceptions and expectations, judgments and prejudices. A mind that is just present to explore and observe and see “things as they are.” It’s kind of like facing 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 judgment, just asking “What is it?”

I heard notes of this practice first from Gil Fronsdal, and explored a little bit some of the teachings of Zen Master Suzuki Roshi, but dug deeper a few years back after a Frank Turner concert.

Frank Turner:
“Today’s day and age and with all the new social media craze - we spend a lot of time disagreeing with each other and holding our ground no matter what we really know or don’t know…"
He suggests that we try using this expression “I don’t know”…  “as we get older we start to realize that we don’t really know anything about anything and neither does anybody else.” 
Secondarily, “I’ve changed my mind”, letting go of what we think we know to open ourselves up to a new understanding or way of thinking. 

“Take a Breath, try these for size…I don’t know, I’ve changed my mind, between life and death we’ll find the time to get it right”.
– Frank Turner from “Get It Right”

Suzuki Roshi notes in his book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s there are few.”

Not knowing, we meet our experience with a mind that simply doesn’t know, that is open to possibility, that has some wonder, that is not demanding a situation to be a certain way or a person to be a certain way, not requiring ourselves to be a certain way, not putting limits on things, not contracting with our thoughts. A not-knowing mind can be relaxed with how things are, and is spacious and relaxed.

by Carol Russell
A dharma talk given May 21, 2024

This is something I have been considering lately.  The Buddha seemed very interested in working with what it is to be a human being. After he encountered the four sights as a young man (old age, sickness, death, and an ascetic person), what he saw sent him on his spiritual search After his ascetic phase, in which he had so mortified his body he nearly starved himself, he realized this way of denial was not leading to the end of suffering. In his realization, he no longer sought to transcend the human body. The teachings he brought forth recognize humanness, the human condition. After his liberation, he brought his teachings right into this conventional everyday muddled human life. He illuminated the middle way as a way to liberation from dissatisfaction: not indulging and not denying.

We eat, so instead of getting rid of eating, which didn’t go well for him, he brought in teachings around eating. Teachings we now have of self-care, of non-harming, of mindful eating.

He recommended we seek out quiet spaces to practice. But instead of insisting on total silence, and having aversion to the inevitable noise, he taught how to incorporate sound into practice. Through this we learn that nothing is outside of mindfulness.

Humans are talkers, so he made recommendations for how speech might be used that is mindful and appropriate to the situation. This is the subject of tonight’s talk. Wise speech.

In fact, mindful speech holds a prominent place in these teachings. This is surely a reflection of how important the Buddha regarded communication. In the Noble Eightfold Path teachings, a wholistic practical summary of the path, wise speech is singled out as one of the eight keys of practice leading to liberation. Wise speech gets its very own place