Beginner's Mind

To discover anything new
for ourselves,
it helps to start on the road
completely denuded of
knowledge.
All this knowing
and belief we
project
fortifying ourselves with
arsenals of information –
our minds saturated
with facts,
buzzing with data,
cross-cutting and interfering
with what
shimmering spark
may flicker
way out there
in the inky dark –
polluting it with the
hum of our cortex,
the noise
of what we already know.

I look at my children
with their wide-eyed
openness,
their gleeful unknowingness,
beginner’s minds
unfettered by facts,
free from precedence
no juvenile records here,
no priors to report.
This clear mind
we should aim to be
mindful of
if we want to learn
anything new,
anything worth
knowing, or anything
at all.