Shunryu Suzuki Quotes

I think a critical part of being successful in our industry is having a beginner's mind

We strive always to have a beginner's mind.

If your mind is empty, it is ready for anything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.

I do like people who have not yet made up their minds about everything, who in fact are still receiving

Let me give you some advice: Try to approach things without preconceived ideas, without supposing you already know everything there is to know about them. Get that trick down and you'll be surprised at what's really all around you.

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few.

I've worked with a lot of first time directors; in fact, I enjoy it because there is a certain beginner's mind that they bring into a project that isn't loaded with the way things have been done before. There's a certain freedom to it.

I have found that children are the most open-minded of all my audiences. They are not set in their ways. They are open to ideas.

I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.

I keep an open mind.

You've had a whole lot of experience, but everything is also radically new at each moment, and you have to bring a kind of childlike second-level innocence to bear upon all situations, if you are going to be of use and you are going to really learn from the situation or the people.

In Japan we have the phrase, "Shoshin," which means "beginner's mind." Our "original mind" includes everything within itself. It is always rich and sufficient within itself. This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything. It is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.

If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything.

Be like a sponge when it comes to each new experience. If you want to be able to express it well, you must first be able to absorb it well.

To be a scientist you have to be willing to live with uncertainty for a long time. Research scientists begin with a question and they take a decade or two to find an answer. Then the answer they get may not even answer the question they thought it would. You have to have a supple enough mind to be open to the possibility that the answer sometimes precedes the question itself.

Don't assume a door is closed; push on it. Don't assume if it was closed yesterday that it is closed today. Don't ever stop learning and improving your mind. If you do, you're going to be left behind.

As long as you ask questions you are breaking through, but the moment you begin to accept, you are psychologically dead. So right through life don't accept a thing, but inquire, investigate. Then you will find that your mind is something really extraordinary, it has no end, and to such a mind there is no death.

Be teachable. That is the whole secret.

No one ever died from an open mind.

Above all, you must remain open and fresh and alive to any new idea.

A stubborn mind conduces as little to wisdom or even to knowledge, as a stubborn temper to happiness

My advice to any young person at the beginning of their career is to try to look for the mere outlines of big things with their fresh, untrained and unprejudiced mind.

I'm very much open to the possibilities.

Don't be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen.