Submitted by Claire de Lune on
By Katie McCoy
There is an old tale about a Zen student who went to see his master in order to seek further knowledge. Eager to impress his teacher, he arrived at the man's doorstep with a skip in his step. Upon seeing his student, the Master gave a wide smile and eagerly invited his protégé in.
As they sat in the room talking to one another, the Zen Master asked his student to go fetch him two cups and a pot of tea. The student returned, placing the items on the table.
The Master listened attentively as the student tried to impress him, speaking with pride about all he had come to know. As this went on, the master carefully started pouring his student a cup of tea. The cup filled up and the master kept pouring, until at last it reached the brim and started spilling out all over the table.
"Stop!" the student shouted. "Can't you see that the cup is full? It can hold no more!" To which the old Zen Master smiled and replied, "And so it is with you. Your mind, too, is full of too many things. Only when you empty it will there be room for more knowledge to come in."
The problem in the metaphorical story is not knowledge itself. Rather it's meant as a warning about how our current beliefs and assumptions can limit our ability to see the world more clearly. A head that is too full of its own wisdom does not allow new knowledge to come in, especially if that knowledge might displace the ideas we've already formed. When our mind is packed with rigid assumptions, it's as if this tea cup of our has been filled to the brim with cement.
When a mind is full of itself . . .
A mind that is too full of what it already assumes to know does more than just leave its owner woefully lacking in wisdom. It can create a lot of problems in our lives. For example . . .
A) Flexibility in thinking consistently shows up as a major factor in resilience, perhaps even the most important factor when it comes to overcoming difficult events in life. The ability to adopt new perspectives allows us to weather the storm like a young tree that can bend and sway in the wind, whereas a closed mind is like a rigid branch that won't bend, and instead snaps under pressure.
B) When we stubbornly hold to our current set of ideas and beliefs, (which may be wrong), this creates stress and anguish as we experience in life.
There are certain things that are naturally upsetting: violence, conflict, ridicule, feeling of helplessness or lack of control, and so on. But much of our pain arises because our cup is too full of destructive assumptions about WHAT CERTAIN THINGS SHOULD MEAN, almost all of which are based on arbitrary and questionable ideas. Ridding our mind of these unnecessary presumptions will provide us with a more flexible cup that can better tolerate everyday stresses.
C) Maintaining a flexible mind that makes room for other perspectives will also help your social life. This is because most conflicts arise from stubborn thinking. We're too busy clinging to our repertoire of current knowledge about 'how things should be' that we're unwilling to open our mind to new ways of looking at things.
The more rigid someone is in their thinking, the more conflict a person will experience with the outside world. Not only will they be more prone to disagreements with others, but they'll experience more inner turmoil whenever the outside world fails to adhere to the rigid politics inside their head.
How flexible is your cup?
Recognizing that our knowledge and viewpoints are ALWAUS incomplete is the mental equivalent of getting a bigger cup. So as you go about your day-to-day business, we hope you'll remember this story. Always keep room in your cup for new wisdom that might alter your current beliefs, and don't be reticent about pouring out the old to make way for the new.
Remember that it's those ideas we've clung to the longest that have typically grown the most stale, and it's often when we're most sure of ourselves that we could benefit the most from a fresh cup of tea.
http://articles.submityourarticle.com/a-mind-that-runeth-over-364229