Gaylon Ferguson

This nuanced commentary on the famous Zen oxherding pictures explores the paradox of welcoming our true nature anew at each stage of spiritual unfolding. Many Buddhist lineages teach that we each already have and express our true nature at every moment. Yet these same traditions also describe several stages on a gradual path of spiritual awakening. According to a Zen Buddhist saying, “You’re perfect as you are, and you could use some improvement.” The oxherding pictures illustrate successive stages such as seeking, glimpsing, touching, and riding the ox—a symbol of true nature—yet also forgetting the ox and even forgetting oneself in effortless awakenment. In Welcoming Beginner’s Mind , Buddhist teacher Gaylon Ferguson explores the oxherding images by guiding us on an experiential path into these seeming contradictions through welcoming —the simple, challenging, and always new possibility of opening to exactly what’s occurring in our experience. This contemplative exercise, which is not meditating or mindfulness, opens a middle path between spiritual bypassing (using meditation or other spiritual practices to repress or avoid parts of ourselves) and spiritual materialism (practicing with a sense of ego involvement and gaining). Rich with teachings from the great Zen teacher and author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, as well as extensive commentary from Tibetan meditation master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (Ferguson’s first teacher), and numerous other writers who have illuminated the oxherding pictures, this book invites you into a process of spiritual maturation that never occurs elsewhere than here or other than now.