Welcoming Beginner's Mind: Zen and Tibetan Buddhist Wisdom on Experiencing Our True Nature [Paperback]

This nuanced commentary on the famous Zen oxherding pictures explores the paradox of welcoming our true nature anew at each stage of spiritual unfolding.

Renowned for centuries, the classic Zen oxherding pictures vividly illustrate the stages of the spiritual journey—from seeking and finding to ultimately forgetting the illusory self and awakening to our true nature. In his commentary on these images, Gaylon Ferguson guides us on an experiential path into these seeming contradictions through welcoming—the simple, challenging, and always new possibility of opening to exactly what’s occurring in our experience. Distinct from meditation and mindfulness, this contemplative exercise leads us beyond spiritual bypassing (using spiritual practices to repress or avoid parts of ourselves) and spiritual materialism (practicing with a heavy sense of ego). Rich with teachings from the great Zen teacher and author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, as well as extensive commentary from Tibetan meditation master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and others who have illuminated the oxherding pictures, this book invites you into a process of spiritual maturation that never occurs elsewhere than here or other than now.
 
Featuring a foreword by David Chadwick, author of Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki.“This beautiful book offers not only a refreshing new take on Zen’s oxherding pictures but also a deep path to awakening based not on seeking but on welcoming and allowing experience here and now, just as it is, again and again. In doing so, it brings together two great Mahayana traditions, Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, in a radical, heart-filled, and profoundly wise fusion that will serve as an invaluable guide for many in our troubled til³Û