By Gina Hassan, Ph.D.

Don’t-Know-Mind, or Beginner’s Mind, is a Buddhist principle that helps remind us that clinging to certainty is a natural human tendency that can cause us suffering, and, in parenting, can interfere with our children’s innate ability to learn from experience.

There aren’t many jobs that we sign up for in life where the stakes are as high as they are in parenting, a job where we are suddenly required to be on call 24/7 without prior training, schooling, or mentoring. We enter this job fairly ignorant of what it entails, no matter how many books we have read, or how much time we have spent around babies and young children. Observing parenthood from the outside is unfathomably different than living within it.

In our culture we like to “know” what we are doing. We may read books, do research on the Internet, or seek control over our lives in a myriad of ways. Good parenting, however, requires “don’t know mind,” a letting go of preconceived ideas, and  relinquishing the notion that we have control over how things are or should be.

While we might want to enter parenthood with our answers in place, how can we know the answers before we have been “in” the experience? Parenting is a moment- to-moment dynamic relationship that does not only involve environmental and situational variables, but the ideas, thoughts, sensations and feelings of both the child and the parent.

As Laura Davis, author of “Becoming the Parent You Want To Be,” put it:

“As much as we might like to enter parenthood with all our answers, techniques, and strategies in place, doing so would mean building a system that fails to include the input of our children. Our ability to stay open, adaptable, and responsive necessitates that we don’t start with all the answers, but that we dedicate ourselves to figuring them out along the way.” (Davis & Keyser 1997: p. 27)

When we enter parenthood from a place of certainty we are not receptive to what stands outside of our preconceived ideas. If we begin with a rigid stance about how things should be, we not only leave out the variable of who our children are and who they are becoming, but we cloud our ability to allow our children and our experience to be our teachers.

Stasis is not a desirable state. In human development stasis means that something has gone awry. Growth and development are natural states that can be derailed both by certainty and by the anxiety that can accompany doubt. But don’t the maxims of “Don’t be certain” and “Don’t be in doubt,” contradict each other? Here is where the teaching of “Don’t-know-mind” can be particularly useful. As the Buddhist teacher Suzuki Roshi said:

“Not-knowing does not mean you don’t know. Not-knowing means not being limited by what we know, holding what we know lightly so that we are ready for it to be different. Maybe things are this way. But maybe they are not.” (as quoted in Fronsdale 2004)

And as Gil Fronsdale writes:

“The practice of not-knowing needs to be distinguished from confusion and debilitating doubt. Confusion is not a virtue: the confused person is somewhat lost and removed from life. With doubt, the mind is agitated or contracted with hesitation and indecision. These mind states tend to obscure rather than clarify.” (Fronsdale 2004)

Fronsdale adds that while doubt and uncertainty are involuntary states, “Don’t-know-mind” is a conscious practice in which, “(We)…cultivate an ability to meet life without preconceived ideas, interpretations, or judgments.” (Fronsdale 2004) The wish to know is a natural human tendency. Having a path in mind is helpful since it highlights where we have veered away from the things that are most important to us. But holding our beliefs lightly, and being willing to sit with the discomfort of not knowing, may be equally important.

As Magda Gerber, the founder of Resources for Infant Educators (RIE), has written, “Babies should not be taught because it usually interferes with learning. The less we interfere with the natural process of learning, the more we can observe how much infants learn all the time.” (Gerber 2003: p. 11)

Babies seek to learn and grow even in the absence of our “stimulating” them. They learn from experience and are constantly experimenting with different ways of making sense of the world. Perhaps our challenge is to be more childlike ourselves, letting each new moment be different from the last, full of surprise, wonder and, sometimes, a little fogginess.

So how can we let go of our preconceived ideas? Perhaps the lesson from Buddhism is that while striving for certainty is a natural human tendency, working to increase our awareness of these states of mind, and “holding them lightly,” can allow us to both learn from our experience and to see more clearly.

Exercise:

1. Notice thoughts of certainty as they arise and see if you can soften the edges, opening to the possibility of things being different and allowing your beliefs to shift.
2. Spend a few minutes observing a baby, witnessing their receptivity and openness to learning and growth.

Sources:

Davis Laura & Keyser, Janis. (1997). Becoming the Parent You Want To Be: A Sourcebook of Strategies for the First Five Years. Three Rivers Press: New York.

Fronsdal, Gil. Not-Knowing. Adapted from a public talk, February 2004. http://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/books-articles/articles/not-knowing/

Gerber, Magda & Weaver, Joan. 2002. Dear Parent: Caring for Infants With Respect. Resources for Infant Educators (RIE): Los Angeles.

Gina Hassan, Ph.D. is a perinatal psychologist specializing in maternal mental health. She offers individual and couples therapy, consultation, and Mindful Mothering Groups. www.ginahassan.com.

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