Resolve to be always beginning - to be a beginner
I have already forgotten where I saw this quote and diligently copied and pasted it into a draft blog post. I'm sorry that I've forgotten, because I deeply appreciate the thought."Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves... like books that are written in a foreign language. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now... Resolve to be always beginning - to be a beginner." -Rainer Maria Rilke
This quote has significance for me because sometime in the last year people started identifying me as an "expert" or, heavens help me, a "guru." While I deeply appreciate being valued and loved, I cringe at these words because they dissuade me from my primary professional identity as a learner. Holding the intent of learning, to approach each situation with the freshest eyes possible - the eyes of a beginner - motivates both the professional services I offer others and my own daily journey through life.
So the balance is this: holding the knowledge of "experience" (rather than being an expert) and staying open to being a beginner.And the point is to live everything.
(Photo: Sunrise on Eastsound, Orcas Island, September, 2007)
posted by Nancy White at 12:27 PM
4 Comments:
Hi, Nancy,
I've always loved Rilke's line about "Live the questions now..." It is from his book Letters To A Young Poet.
I was surprised to see the line about "resolve to be always beginning..." When I went to look for the quote in the book, this is what I found:
You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselveslike locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within yourself the possibility of shaping and forming as a particularly happy and pure way of living; train yourself to it - but take whatever comes with great trust, and if only it comes out of your own will, out of some need of your inmost being, take it upon yourself and hate nothing.
And you also reminded me of this quote I love:
"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." - Shunryo Suzuki-Roshi
Thanks for such good reminders.
Shunryo Suzuki-Roshi also sprung to mind for me ("Zen Mind, Beginners Mind" is one of the few books I've read several times). Beginners can do things so simply because they have no choice. Just do the next thing and then the next thing (as a marvellous monk told me last year).
Of course, the problem with being a beginner is the existence of experts...
Nancy, nice shot of a beautiful new day!
I'm one of those who has certainly identified you as an expert, as I often lurk here and learn from your experience and insights. But my intention is also to live as learner, and that requires observing others with more experience.
The advice I take this time from your post's admonishment is to not wait so much until I have it all together. If our intention is learning, how complete must our thinking be before tossing it out for self-reflection or feedback from others? That's part of the tension in our intention.
A related quote I keep at hand (too freely attributed to Goethe) is:
What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it;
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
I've been slow to come back around and savor all of your comments and additions around the Rilke quote. I just want to say "THANK YOU!"
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