Mel: Habitual/regular mind reading would be quite unnatural for a zen way of life....
R: I'm hooked into pondering a little on this today Mel. The things I'm pondering on are 1. the no *goal* aspect of zen 2. the fact that humans are prone to assess another persons mind. As for the flowers, I know for sure that after I've gotten over my 'Wow, what did I do to deserve this?' routine, I'd be like........'Whoa, lovely stuff!!!'. Flowers and chocolates are not something I receive regularly, can you tell?? Lol. Rose --- On Fri, 1/14/11, Mel <[email protected]> wrote: From: Mel <[email protected]> Subject: [Zen] beginner's mind, romantic moments, etc(to Rose/list) To: [email protected] Date: Friday, January 14, 2011, 11:11 AM Greetings Rose and forum --- On Fri, 14/1/11, Rose P <[email protected]> wrote: ROSE: Is this something to do with the fact that we're all practising, and no-one really ever actually achieves beginners mind 100%? But still, beginners mind is something that we might agree is a goal (not the right word) of sorts...... MEL: The beginner's mind is there, and was always there. It will never go away, but it does get covered by desires, demands, and other short-comings we place upon ourselves ROSE: Conversely, trying to assess the minds of others would seem to be fraught with mucho danger! Sometimes we're bang on, most of the time we're not. This I know from personal experience. MEL: Of course. Habitual/regular mind-reading (eg. in romance) would be quite unnatural for a Zen way of life. We have eyes and ears, and what we see or hear, is what we get ROSE: If I was given flowers and chocolates I suspect that my automatic thought would be - wow, what did I do to deserve these? So I guess the cynicism would be towards myself, not towards the giver. MEL: Or, a woman could/would think... - ...Hmmm..is he moving in on me? I don't even like him! - I hate flowers, and I'm tryin' to lose some freakin' weight!(*big laughter) - Oh s**t, how do I brush this guy off? in peace Mel
