Unlocked. . .
There is something wonderful about the first cool morning after a long summer. You step outside and immediately notice it. The world feels familiar, yet somehow new. This quality of seeing freshly lies close to what Buddhist practice often calls beginner’s mind: meeting experience without assuming we already know everything about it.
Change gives us endless opportunities to practice this.
Yet our minds love conclusions.
“I know how this will turn out.”
“I’ve always been this way.”
“They will never change.”
“I’m too old to start that.”
These statements can feel like certainty, but sometimes they are simply walls we have built around possibility. Impermanence quietly challenges them. If everything changes, then you are changing too.
Your past influences you, but it does not have to dictate every step ahead. The person who failed yesterday can learn today. The person who spent decades believing one thing can discover another perspective.
Someone who has never painted can pick up a brush.
Someone who has never meditated can begin with one breath.
Someone who lost direction can choose another path.
We sometimes stand before them carrying so many assumptions from the past that we cannot see the possibilities ahead. Beginner’s mind asks us to put some of that baggage down.
Today, approach one familiar part of your life as though you were encountering it for the first time. Listen differently to someone you know well. Walk your usual route and notice something new. Question an old assumption. Try something you have been telling yourself you cannot do.
Change can certainly unsettle us, but it can also unlock doors. Every morning life quietly places another blank page before us. We may carry yesterday’s story, but we do not have to write yesterday’s sentences again.
Peace and Love, Jim
#unlocked #thedailybuddha #tdb
