shoshin

It takes guts and hope to enter a situation where we are afraid that we don’t know what’s going to happen next. Our culture’s overarching urging to all of us, starting when we’re children, is caution – be careful, because there’s always something that could hurt you or take something from you.

Our culture teaches us to have certain tools and strategies, so that we won’t be hurt or taken from. One such tool is certainty. When we’re certain that we know the answer, or that we know what is probably going to happen, we feel safer. Certainty helps us navigate sticky or unfamiliar moments. We can meet any opponent. We can handle what comes.

And certainty is really good for engineers to have when designing bridges that will stay strong, and air traffic controllers who are responsible for helping planes land safely. Certainty is very helpful in knowing whether the chicken breast is baked fully and we won’t get food poisoning. All of those things are about safety and keeping us from getting hurt.

But here’s the problem with certainty:

Everybody agrees that bridges falling, planes crashing, and food poisoning are things we need to prevent. They hurt people’s bodies. But not everybody agrees about what’s hurtful to people’s hearts or minds or souls.

For some people, new ideas are dangerous. For some people, diverging from cultural norms is dangerous. For some people, challenging established authority or changing the way things are done is dangerous.

There are entire cultural systems that are based on a stable, unassailable the-way-things-are. Those systems are in place in order to maintain certainty. I know the rules. I know how to behave. I know what is good or bad. Therefore, I know how to move through the world, I know my place in the world, and I know how things will turn out.

Jesus was raised as a Jewish man in a region in the Roman Empire. The scriptures say that he had a mystic experience, and then began teaching about a radically different understanding of the universe than he had been brought up believing. A big part of his teaching methodology involved asking impossible questions, or doing impossible things, or inviting people into impossible decisions. He was drawing people out of certainty – so that they could be open to something larger than the system they had known. He told them, “If you want to live in this life I’m describing, you have to be transformed.” Transformation is a big word in his context – not just make some changes, but be utterly changed, at a deep level. “Be like little children,” he taught. “That’s the only way you’ll see it.” Be willing not to know everything already. Be in wonder. Be open.

Very often, those with certainty are suspicious of – or even hostile to – those who challenge what they’re certain of. In Jesus’ case, those with certainty had him executed.

The word shoshin, from Zen Buddhism, means “beginner’s mind.” It’s about being open. Receptive. Not sure. Uncertain. The reason the student of Zen is invited into this shoshin space is so that they can see beyond what they already know. All true learning takes place in shoshin space.

The certainty within us resists. It doesn’t want to allow for the possibility that it might be mistaken or just not-fully-informed. Certainty likes to know things. Depending on how much fear we’re feeling, our certainty may simply resist shoshin space – or it may react with hostility or some kind of violence. That can be scary when it’s happening around us. It can feel even more scary when it’s happening not outside us but within us. When the reformer asking questions, or the teacher inviting us into shoshin space, is our Soul – and our Mind is the holder of certainty.

I’d love to tell you there’s an easy way to fix this, but there isn’t. “Fixing it” is about certainty – I’m uncomfortable, and I want to stop feeling uncomfortable, so, fix it. Then I’ll feel safe and certain again. No, in the realm of the Soul, there isn’t that kind of certainty – not the kind that’s about making sure we’re “safe.”
But there’s something much better than that kind of safety. What is it? Come into the shoshin space and find out.