Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. You know, we can so easily view people, events and the world around us through a veil of preconceived notions, judgments, and opinions. For instance, maybe you have an opinion about someone and you, you know, put them in a box, as the saying goes. She's a hippie. He's arrogant.

She's smart. He's weird. But if we hold on to these mental labels, thinking that we know someone through these mental judgments, you know, we'll never truly meet them again. We'll only see them through the lens of our own viewpoints. Similarly, we do the same thing with places, events and even life itself.

And it's really important to remind ourselves that whatever our mental labels about things are. That's all they really are, mental labels about things. Not reality, not the truth. You know, to meet reality moment by moment is to put aside the attachment to these judgments and the idea that you already know something and adopt the openness and the freshness of a beginner's mind. So there's a really well-known story about this.

Yeah. Uh, young man goes to see a Zen master, but when he arrives at the master's house, he launched into a detailed explanation of everything he already knew about Zen philosophy. On and on and on he went. And as this student was speaking, the Zen master starts pouring tea. He pours one cup for himself and one cup for the visitor.

But as he pours the second cup, tea fills to the brim of the cup and spills over the edges onto the table, onto the floor. And the student yells, "Stop pouring!" The cup is already full. "Yes, it is," replied the Master, "Unlike this cup, you are already full of your own opinions, viewpoints, and judgments. You're not going to be able to let any wisdom or understanding in unless you first empty your cup." So this story is a great illustration about how we fill our minds with the opinions and judgments and beliefs. And when our minds are so full like that, we can no longer see things clearly.

There's no space left for new wisdom and understanding to emerge. But we can train ourselves to bring a beginner's mind into our daily life. And perhaps most importantly, into our relationships with others. You know, when we put aside our preconceived ideas about others and meet them as they are in this moment, we give them a great gift, the gift of being truly seen and heard. And this may be the greatest gift we can give.

So maybe take a moment to contemplate how would you like to possibly bring this beginner's mind in your life today? Maybe what notions, judgments and opinions can you lay aside so you can see what's happening more clearly?