“Beginner’s Mind” is one concept I have learned in my zen practice which has proved perhaps the most utilitarian in my work as an actor. The Japanese word for this is shoshin. There are many ways of translating and understanding this idea, but as I am not a linguist and this is not a work on Buddhist philosophy, I think it will suffice to simply talk about “beginner’s mind.” The idea should become relatively obvious even to the most inexperienced actor. Shunryu Suzuki Roshi says, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.” (Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, 1970.)
When you act through the lens of beginner’s mind, acting either in the mundane, day to day sense, as well as in the sense of the performing arts, then you are acting without preconceived notions or expectations, acting as if it was the first time you had ever encountered this moment. A beginner’s mind experiences wonder, awe, possibility, a potential for limitless variety, an embrace of all possibilities. If you have ever watched a baby discover their toes or a child encountering the sea shore or snow for the very first time, then you have seen something very much like pure beginner’s mind. If you have experienced a jolt of inspiration the first time you have performed a scene or read it aloud in rehearsal, if the lines are a new discovery on every syllable, then you have experienced beginner’s mind as an actor. It is wonderful to encounter something for the very first time. The trick of life, of course, is that we only encounter something for the first time once, and thereafter we tend to have expectations. We attach strongly to the desire to have that first experience again, and by doing so we close ourselves off from our beginner’s mind, we block ourselves from that experience. This is a very common frustration we actors face.
Once I was working on a scene from Shakespeare’s King John in a classroom with a well known director. I was playing Louis the French Dauphin, and it was the scene where Cardinal Pandolph tries to persuade me to cease my attack on England. “Your grace shall pardon me, I will not back,” etc. A fine speech from an uneven play. The director arrayed many of my classmates around me to play the various nobles, French and English, whom I am leading, and instructed them to cheer or otherwise respond as I went through the speech when they were feeling inspired and persuaded by me. The exercise should seem familiar to anyone who has taken a few acting courses, it is a useful one. My objective was not to change anything about Cardinal Pandolph really, it was to solidify and unify the soldiers under my command, to make them follow me and not obey The Church. No small thing for a noble in the Middle Ages! At one point they cheered me after a line where I was not expecting a response. I cannot remember which line and what I did that elicited their response, which is fine because it’s beside the point. Their cheers launched me into a brand new action on my next line and it felt exhilarating for us all. The director paused the scene, we reflected on what had happened, and then had me launch back into the speech from the same line, then stopped me immediately and had me start the line again, then stopped me and had me start the line again. He did this several times and then had me go back to the top and launch into the whole speech anew. The reasoning, he said, was that once we’ve made that new discovery then we’re going to try and replicate it immediately, and we will fail because we’re expecting to have the same experience, the same result. It will no longer be “fresh.” So make the discovery, enjoy it, then repeat the beat a bunch of times until you’re not expecting it so much, and you are more likely to keep the moment “fresh” or “alive.” This was good advice, a good practice. Without using the phrasing of “beginner’s mind,” he was still expressly trying to get me (and all of us students) to understand and incorporate beginner’s mind in our work.
I reflected on this moment in my journal after the class, and in the process came to recall many similar exercises I’d experienced over many years in both classroom and rehearsal hall with many different directors and teachers. Often these lessons or exercises are presented to us as a sort of trick, something to keep in our actor’s bag of tricks, so to speak, like a magician’s valise we can draw from in moments of difficulty in our craft. You also hear these described as tools, new tools for our actor’s toolbox, which we can pull out as needed. The right tool for the right job. I’ve used this kind of phrasing often while teaching. I’ve come to believe that this phrasing, in fact this entire framing of the actor’s work, is as likely to compound the core problem as it is to solve the momentary difficulty.
If acting is this thing we are doing, striving to behave truthfully in imaginary circumstances, and our problems come when we cannot behave truthfully in a moment, then our difficulty is not that we are lacking the correct tool for the task, it is simply that we are not acting. Frequently it is because we have stopped behaving and have, instead, started performing, and I think the language we use to address this is important, especially since so much of the actor’s art is a matter of using language. To employ a trick or to deploy a tool is suggestive of working to alter our performance, and eventually we will encumber ourselves with so many tricks, so many tools, that we cannot conceive of our behavior (in imaginary circumstances) without them. Ask an experienced actor how many times they’ve been called out for falling back on their usual bag of tricks and you are likely to hear, “A lot!” Our attachment to tricks, to tools, to notions of something exterior to and separate from ourselves is one source of this problem of performance. I suggest we strip away this language, we strip away this notion of acting as something exterior to our regular selves, and instead consider training ourselves to maintain, among many things, a beginner’s mind.
“How do I get a beginner’s mind in the midst of rehearsal? What’s the trick to it?” Aha, see? That’s already a mental framework that will let you down. You already have everything you need. Your mind is a beginner’s mind. It does require effort to remember this truth, however. It will not be enough to simply try and deploy the tool of mindfulness when you are in rehearsal, or when you are preparing for a performance using whatever warm up routine you find most satisfying. You cannot succeed if you have an acting mind, and a mundane mind. Your mind is your acting mind. You must always have your acting mind. It must always be your own mind. It must be beginner’s mind. We are encountering the usual problem with writing about these things: they can be described, they can be theorized, but they cannot be understood without doing. This is another reason why having an Acting Dojo would be of great value.
Recently, I began trying to teach myself how to play guitar. I do not have any particularly strong or inherent musical talent, but I thought it would be fun, perhaps even therapeutic in dealing with the stresses of the current historical moment. You may think it naive of me, but I was surprised to find that I had to tune the guitar every time I sat down to practice with it. The laws of physics describe why this is necessary, entropy and all of that, and while I expected to have to tune the instrument at times I didn’t realize it was necessary to tune it every time I sat down to play. I suppose it is not necessary, and out of tune guitar can be happily strummed as well as an in tune one, but if I want the music to sound just so then it is better if the guitar is tuned. People are the same way. There are many ways in which we keep ourselves in tune. A guitar that is in tune is like a mind that is empty of illusions and expectations. Tuning a guitar puts it in a state of readiness. Sitting zazen, performing walking meditation, and so returns us to our beginner’s mind and puts us in a state of readiness. We tune the guitar before we play music with it.
The best actors are in constant practice of self understanding, and of non-self understanding...of understanding the self-non-self-universe. English is a bad language for these ideas, but I hope you are finding some small bits of sense here. Every behavior we do is acting, whether it is brushing our teeth in the morning, playing Hamlet, or having a drink with our comrades after the performance. We should not reserve our own tuning for only one of those actions. Then we have separated ourselves from ourselves, from our work. Acting has been set over here, and David has been set over there. It will always be a struggle to put them in the same spot. In an Acting Dojo, David learns that he and Acting are not separate. We train ourselves with practices that keep us awake to our beginner’s mind and whether we are brushing our teeth or killing Claudius we are not confused.
It is best in as much as it is most likely to be a disciplined, repeating practice to have a dojo where you can train and understand your beginner’s mind, but there is nothing stopping you from starting to do it right now. There are many ways to learn and practice at home, or on the train, or in the park. I started by reading the book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. I also have enjoyed the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, particularly his Miracle of Mindfulness. These are excellent texts that can help you start. There are also podcasts, videos, etc online. But you don’t need to buy or acquire anything to start experiencing your beginner’s mind. Simply sit down, try to keep your back up straight as if a light string was supporting you from the ceiling and attached at the crown of your head, soften your gaze so that you are seeing things around you but not looking at them particularly, and let gravity hold you in your place. When you feel the impulse to breathe in, inhale through your nose and feel your lungs and chest fill, then when your inhalation is done allow yourself to slowly exhale through your mouth. You do not need to inhale and exhale for certain amounts of time. You’ve been breathing your entire life, you know what to do if you listen. Then simply breathe and allow all things to be as they are. If a thought enters your head, do not try and banish it. Accept it and let it go. I sometimes think of my thoughts as the same as the cats that live in my home with me. Sometimes they come to me, and sometimes they go. Often they are about their own business. There is little point trying to make a cat do a thing. Don’t try and make your thoughts do. Just sit. Just breathe. You are doing all you need to do. There is nothing else to do.
Try it for two minutes at first. It will be enough.
Note: there are people who find it very difficult or frustrating to sit zazen because the executive function of their minds works in a certain way, such as people with ADHD. Do not do anything that causes yourself to suffer, that causes you to misjudge yourself. You have everything you need to be yourself, to be an actor, to act. If something I discuss causes you suffering then there is no point in doing it, because you know better than I do! Don’t listen to me! Except when I say to be kind and patient with yourself. Listen to that, but nothing else.