初心 shoshin Beginner's Mind

The beginner's mind is the learner's state, eager and unpracticed. The word is older than the maxim it is best known from. Japanese dictionaries record four senses of it, and three of them matter here. The oldest in Japanese writing is the Buddhist sense, the first arising of the mind that seeks awakening. Next is the resolve a person first formed. Zeami's is the state of one who has just begun an art. He used the word in his own treatises before he closed one with the rule that it must not be forgotten. Which of those you take, the freshness of the learner or the resolve you began with, is yours.

The Japanese word 初心 meaning "Beginner's Mind" is composed of the kanji 初 (read sho) meaning "first time; beginning" and 心 (read shin) meaning "heart; mind; spirit".

The word came to Japan with the Buddhist scriptures, where a sutra translated in the early fifth century asks whether awakening is reached with the first mind or the later one; its sense of a learner's state is in Japanese writing by about 1211, and English took it up as "beginner's mind" from Suzuki Shunryū's talks at the San Francisco Zen Center, in print by 1967.

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