It's not that spiritual experiences are hard to come by, it's just that we have mental habits and conditioning that tends to come back to rule our thinking and behavior. The zen practice of the same name mentioned earlier is practiced to achieve a state of mind free from conditioning and habits, thus experiencing divine clarity.
This is written from the point of view of someone experiencing, once again, this clarity. He pleads, or prays, "Hold on tight, beginner's mind... Stay a while my inner child, I'd like to know your trick" grasping with the intellect, for some thought that will bring him back to the state of clarity he is experiencing now.
He knows from experience, though, what often follows this experience of spiritual clarity, shown by the lines, "hold on tight beginner's mind/ the currents far too strong/ It’ll carry you along/ Till you’re just like everyone." So, he expects that the old, stale way of thinking and experiencing the world will come back, though he pleads with this new feeling to stay.
"Oh how they will try/ to pull and pry/ away what you know now." This is an ironic line, implying that the beginner's mind is actually more informed than the experienced. This paints conditioning as a bad thing, a weakness, which is contrary to the way it usually works. So many activities are skill based- the longer you've been doing them, the better you are. Here he points out that this is not the rule for spiritual evolution, where our conditioning and preconceived notions only hold us back from our goal.
It's not that spiritual experiences are hard to come by, it's just that we have mental habits and conditioning that tends to come back to rule our thinking and behavior. The zen practice of the same name mentioned earlier is practiced to achieve a state of mind free from conditioning and habits, thus experiencing divine clarity. This is written from the point of view of someone experiencing, once again, this clarity. He pleads, or prays, "Hold on tight, beginner's mind... Stay a while my inner child, I'd like to know your trick" grasping with the intellect, for some thought that will bring him back to the state of clarity he is experiencing now.
He knows from experience, though, what often follows this experience of spiritual clarity, shown by the lines, "hold on tight beginner's mind/ the currents far too strong/ It’ll carry you along/ Till you’re just like everyone." So, he expects that the old, stale way of thinking and experiencing the world will come back, though he pleads with this new feeling to stay.
"Oh how they will try/ to pull and pry/ away what you know now." This is an ironic line, implying that the beginner's mind is actually more informed than the experienced. This paints conditioning as a bad thing, a weakness, which is contrary to the way it usually works. So many activities are skill based- the longer you've been doing them, the better you are. Here he points out that this is not the rule for spiritual evolution, where our conditioning and preconceived notions only hold us back from our goal.