One of my favorite zen stories is A Cup of Tea in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones:
Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!” “Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

Emptying the Cup to Truly Learn

When learning Martial Arts, or anything really, it is important to empty our cup and be ready to fill it with whatever there is to learn today. We have all experienced this attitude that makes learning difficult, where we think we know everything there is to know about a subject. Some of my favorite students are those who practiced some other style of Martial Arts for many years and then come to our dojo as a beginner. It is a real challenge to put aside everything they have learned and be open to what we do here. Yet that is one of the best lessons we can get from our practice: to let go of what we think we know. It is said that in the mind of a beginner there are many possibilities, yet in the mind of an expert there are few. We want to be open to all possibilities so that we may learn and flow with what we are present to.

What Are You Holding On To?

The question of the week in the dojo is, what do I hold on to that I would be better off letting go? Everyone has baggage, metaphysical things we carry with us. They can feel like we lug around a backpack full of bricks, every once in a while picking up a new one and zipping it into our collection. What a heavy, cumbersome way to experience life we are born into. Yet we can let go of these attachments. With awareness through meditation and practice, asking ourselves what we can let go of and finding old ideas and habits that no longer serve us becomes easier.

We all have attachments that have served us until this point. Some may have even kept us alive, or at least sane. Some are good ideas, important truths that we will carry with us forever. Yet when we ask ourselves, what do I think I know that may not be so? We may be surprised (or unsurprised) to find many “facts” that just aren’t. We hear things every day and sometimes hold onto them like they are universal truths. Yet when we subject some of these to scrutiny they just don’t hold up. The next logical step for us is to seek the truth.

Let Go of the Need to Know

As human beings we like knowing things, especially how things will turn out for us in the future. This makes us feel comfortable and safe. When what we think we know is challenged, we don’t like it, we feel uncomfortable. Yet we should seek out that discomfort, because that is where growing and learning happens. In class, we have to push ourselves to the limit to grow as martial artists. In life, we should try to play often in that same kind of discomfort, pushing our limits, challenging our knowledge and giving ourselves the opportunity to learn.

Emptying our cup can seem very difficult at first. Every drop of tea feels like a brick of knowledge we lug around because it paradoxically makes us feel comfortable, because we are used to the heavy load. When we empty our cup it may feel like dropping the entirety of our self. Meditation is a practice of this. The more we practice letting go, the easier it gets. Bowing onto the mats, we should imagine we are letting all of our baggage slip off. Stepping into class, we are ready to be present and learn.