Welcoming Beginner's Mind: Zen and Tibetan Buddhist Wisdom on Experiencing Our True Nature

(Paperback)

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This nuanced commentary on the famous Zen ox herding pictures explores the paradox of welcoming your true nature anew at each stage of spiritual development. Many Buddhist schools teach that we each already have and express our true nature at every moment. Yet these same schools paradoxically also lay out stages on the path of spiritual development. How can a person always already have their true nature and continually be evolving into it In the ox herding pictures from the Zen tradition, for instance, the images illustrate stages such as seeking, glimpsing, touching, and riding the ox-the representation of true nature-and also of forgetting the ox and even forgetting oneself. In Welcoming Beginner's Mind, Buddhist teacher Gaylon Ferguson reflects on the ox herding images to show that the path into this contradiction can be walked with the practice of welcoming-the simple, challenging, and always new possibility of opening to exactly what's occurring in your experience. This practice, which he distinguishes from meditation, opens a middle path between spiritual bypassing (using meditation or other spiritual practices to repress or avoid parts of ourselves) and spiritual materialism (practicing with a sense of ego involvement and gain). Rich with teachings from the great Zen master and author of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, Ferguson's own teacher Ch gyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and numerous others who have commented on the ox herding pictures, this book invites you into a process of spiritual maturation that never occurs elsewhere than here or other than now.

Reviews

This beautiful book offers not only a refreshing new take on Zens oxherding pictures but also a deep path to awakening based not on seeking but on welcoming and allowing experience here and now, just as it is, again and again. In doing so, it brings together two great Mahayana traditions, Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, in a radical, heart-filled, and profoundly wise fusion that will serve as an invaluable guide for many in our troubled times.
Henry Shukman, Zen teacher and author of One Blade of Grass

Author Bio

GAYLON FERGUSON, PhD, has practiced and taught Buddhism for over four decades. He received a doctorate in cultural anthropology in 1996 and taught at several universities, including fifteen years as core faculty at Naropa. He is a senior dharma teacher in the Shambhala International Buddhist community and has led meditation programs in numerous cities in the U.S. and internationally since 1976. He has been published in anthologies including Dharma, Color, and Culture; Mindful Politics; and Black and Buddhist, and he is the author of Natural Wakefulness and Natural Bravery.