In the group meditation, I am familiar with this concept of beginner's mind, but lately, I am challenging myself: how well do I generate 'beginner's mind' in daily life? The teaching is perhaps very subtle--so much so that I doubt that one can reduce it to a formula. To do so would be a little bit like telling a child to keep her eyes on a hot stove by literally "bulging at the eyes". This is neither possible all the time nor particularly desirable. The alternative is to have the notion that there is simply no enduring situation, so it's best to approach all situations with the gentleness of someone offering a sip of tea.
To go back to this notion of impermanence: does it all entail that one should just not care about the changes in life? I don't think this is quite what it means, because, again, it starts to sound like a trite formula: "care" vs "not care"...and sooner or later even the seeming relaxation of 'non-care' can become quite straining. In fact, there is no escape from either care or non-care. For example, everyone needs to be able to take care of situations, lest one lose touch with their connection to other beings. But on the other hand, too much 'care' can be a kind of attachment that leads to suffering of different kinds. When a person is liberated from idealizing any views, I wonder if it would perhaps allow them to better move through different situations without attachment.
Another way to look at it is that one often makes the mistake of trying too hard to rationalize the world into distinct categories or opposites: 'care' and 'not care', 'love' and 'hate', 'anger' and 'calm', etc. But what happens when a person decides not to categorize herself at all? What if she simply lets go of identifying with either caring or non-caring, or any other supposed marker of one's identity. Would this not liberate a person to benefit others?
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