In today’s post I am looking at Shunryū Suzuki’s beginner’s mind in Zen and von Foerster’s ethical imperative. Readers of my blog know that I love connecting the dots often in seemingly varying fields.

Suzuki said something useful:

In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind, there are few.

 Suzuki did not mean that expertise is bad. He meant something about the stance the expert takes. This implies closure and certainty. The sense that you already know what you are looking at.

The beginner, by contrast, approaches with a different posture. Not from weakness but from openness. The beginner does not pretend to understand. The beginner stays curious. The beginner remains alert to surprise. There is so much we do not know about this person or situation. Let me watch closely. Let me notice what I have not seen before. Let me find new ways to interact. This brings a kind of freshness and openness that can otherwise easily get stale.

That posture matters. It opens the space for others to be present in ways expertise often does not allow.

I think about this in relation to something Heinz von Foerster focused on from the second order Cybernetics standpoint. He became increasingly focused on an ethical question: what does the epistemology demand? If we accept that the observer is always inside what they describe, and that the description is shaped by who is doing the observing, then what follows? Von Foerster saw that the observer cannot stand outside the act of knowing. The observer is always inside, always making choices about what to look at and what to leave out. And if that is how knowledge works, the observer must be accountable for it.

Von Foerster’s answer was this:

I shall act always so as to increase the number of choices.

It sounds simple. It is not. It means that every description you make, every frame you draw, every boundary you establish is your choice and it closes off some possibilities and opens others. When you approach as an expert with certainty, you narrow the space of possibilities. You decide in advance what is worth looking at. You make it harder for others to contribute what they see. You increase the burden on those whose concerns fall outside your frame.

When you approach with beginner’s mind, something shifts. You remain open to the possibility that you have missed something. You stay willing to be surprised. You create room for others to bring what they notice. You increase the number of ways the situation can be understood and acted upon. You do not foreclose possibilities. You multiply them.

We all do this. We all reach for the solutions we have used before. Or we rush towards the allure of certainty and familiarity of 4 x 4 matrices and frameworks. We all carry forward the certainties that worked in the past. That is how expertise functions. But expertise has a shadow side. The more sure you are, the less you have to look. The less you look, the more you miss.

Beginner’s mind is not about abandoning what you know. It is about holding what you know lightly enough to remain teachable. It is about approaching even the familiar with the question “what else might be happening here?” It is about accepting that you might be wrong, and that being wrong is information, not failure.

This stance also aligns with epistemic humility. Epistemic humility is not doubt or weakness. It is the recognition that your knowledge is always made from somewhere, shaped by your position, and therefore always incomplete.

This is where beginner’s mind and von Foerster’s imperative connect. You cannot increase the number of choices if you have already decided what the situation is. You cannot increase the number of choices if you approach from closure. You can only do it by remaining open, by staying curious, by being willing to go back and look again, by letting others see what your frame might have missed.

It is not always simple. It is harder and vigorous, in a way, than certainty. Certainty is restful. Beginner’s mind requires work. It requires staying alert. It requires acknowledging that your position in the situation makes some things visible and other things invisible, and that you alone cannot see the whole.

Von Foerster was not modest about what this implied. If you accept that you are responsible for what your description makes possible and what it forecloses, then you cannot hide behind expertise. You cannot say “I was following procedure” or “I was doing what I was trained to do.” You can only act in a way that remains accountable, that stays open, that keeps asking whose concerns are outside the frame.

I will finish with this thought:

When we are genuinely curious, we create room for understanding. When we say there is so much we do not know, we open ourselves to seeing what we have missed. When we find new ways to interact, we bring freshness and openness to what could otherwise grow stale.

Replace the object of that curiosity, and you have the ethical foundation von Foerster was pointing at.

Stay Curious and Always keep on learning…

If you liked what you have read, please consider my book “Second Order Cybernetics,” available in hard copy and e book formats. https://www.cyb3rsyn.com/products/soc-book