Receiving New Ideas

There is an oft told zen story about a student who is frustrated with his inability to grasp the ideas that his master is trying to teach him.

"I am just not getting it," the student complains to the master, "what should I do?"

The master invites the student to sit and offers him some tea. The student accepts the offer and the master begins to pour tea into the students cup. The cup fills and begins to overflow onto the table.

"Master," the student exclaims, "My cup is full."

"That is your problem," the master replies, "your cup is full."

When your mind is full of things, you cannot receive new ideas. It is too full of the old ideas. And the longer the old ideas stay in there, the harder is it to replace them with new ones. This is a problem because the world is constantly changing and it is necessary to accept new ideas in order to keep up with it. After a while you become very rigid in your views. They become more inconsistent with the world around you. And you can find fewer and fewer people who would agree with you on things. So, what do you do.

Well, the answer is fairly simple, actually. You have to be diligent in your acceptance of new idea. When you read the newspaper, for example, instead of reading it from the perspective that they are all idiots and you are the only one who really knows what is going on, read it from the perspective that there may actually be something in there to be learned. That doesn't mean to just naively accept everything. But it does mean to give it a fair chance.

And, that is only a start. You should seek out new ideas and new ways of looking at things. Read books, take classes, explore new ideas. Watch movies and TV shows that you would not normally be attracted to. It has to be an active effort.

Just like you have to get off the couch and get some exercise, you have get out of the valley your mind has settled into and exercise it with some new ideas. New ideas are the key to mental flexibility and it takes effort to achieve it.