About
What this blog is about
What does it take to examine your own doings and deciding that things could be done in different ways. By looking at yourself as if looking for the first time you see new things, by doing things as if for the first time the discoveries are endless. The core of thoughts here is that nothing is ever exactly the same, so everything is new. We all are perpetual beginners as long as we keep this in mind. A lot of what we think we know is just what we believe we know. Do we ever know for sure?
So what is this blog about exactly?
>> Thoughts form a Zen mind living in a Western World <<
A tough nut to crack but I can’t say it in any other way. On this blog I’m looking at the world around me trough my experiences with Zen.
Does this mean that if you’re not interested in Zen that there is nothing here for you? Certainly not! Everybody can benefit from a breath of fresh air, the occasional storm and a different way of looking at things. That’s what I have to offer you, a different view that has the ability to shatter your beliefs and reveal truth.
Where did this knowledge come from
It’s very obvious that my main influence is Zen. It gave me a way of looking at things from a distance and disconnect from the event, it also gave me the possibility to connect with what was going on right there and then. Looking from the outside and looking from within at the same time.
As a tribute to Zen I decided to call this blog mind the beginner, referring to “Zen mind, Beginner’s mind” by Shunryu Suzuki.
The beginner is the one who we can learn most from because he sees everything for the first time, without preconceptions and doesn’t take anything for granted.
Who am I
My name is Christiaan and I live somewhere in The Netherlands, a small country that hardly shows up on a standard sized globe. I haven’t lived here all my life though, my earliest memories were formed when I lived in Japan (Kobe) in the eighties. The Asian influences have stayed with me and I’m thankful for them. At the moment I’m a trained exercise therapist (I don’t practice however) and I’m a bachelor student Information Science at the Radboud University in Nijmegen.
Am I defined only by what I’ve learned in the education system? Of course not. There is more to me than just that but I’ll use phrases for that:
- Zen enthusiast
- Minimalist
- Quality seeker
- Motorcyclist
- Internal Martial Arts lover (Cheng Hsin and T’ai Chi)
- Bookworm
- Freedom business entrepreneur
The social media channels I’m using at the moment:
