Master of the Wing

Yet Always a Beginner

The great masters always regard themselves as beginners, with minds open to new experiences, the momentary adventure of life. A close-to-retirement Boeing 777 examiner, who had also instructed in the T-37, F-4, F-15, B-727 & B-737, once told me he still learns something on every flight. If he does, I must.

Beginners Mind is the right attitude of a child learning. Absorbing, accepting, always in touch with the wondrous new. Watch a kid attack something new. Then think of the amazing number of new experiences and the amount of information a baby or small child has to process every day. They breathe it in with eyes and heart wide open. And if it knocks them down, they happily (most of the time)  get right up and try again. A child lives in the moment, knowing only now, not worrying about the past or the future. Sam was much more experienced with kids than I was, and would take time when some visited the airport to open my eyes to how natural and immediate and honest kids are in relating to the world. How creative, loving, emotional, excited, dynamic, fluid, and flexible they are. Children are open to the joyful learning experiences that are literally re-wiring their brains with new synaptic connections and changed neurons while as adults our eyes and minds and hearts are much more closed. We lose the wonder. And so we lose some of the education.

In a famous story told many times—maybe most famously by Bruce Lee at the beginning of his last movie Enter The Dragon—a noted professor of world religions makes the journey into the countryside to see a Zen monk. The famous professor, who has many students and has published many papers, wishes to add to his vast knowledge of various religions by studying simple Zen practice. The monk and the professor talk, but the monk is frustrated by the lack of learning by the professor. The professor picks every sentence apart, then compares and contrasts it with his knowledge of other religions. He talks a lot to the monk about all he knows about other religions. He right away tries to fit the monk into his known world. Eventually the monk gracefully has him sit down to have a simple drink of tea. The monk slowly starts to pour tea into the professor's cub. The monk keeps pouring more and more tea into the professor's cup. Seemingly unmoved, the monk continues to pour tea, completely overflowing the cup. Hot tea spills onto the professor's shoes. He yells "Stop!  What are you doing?"

The monk says the tea cup is like the professor's brain. "You must empty your mind so we can begin. The value of a cup is its emptiness."

However much we know—however full our cup—we must empty ourselves to receive more. We need to be ready and accepting of the new. This is Beginner's Mind. Like many Zen ideas it is hard to read about, but it can be easily demonstrated. All you need is a cup and some hot tea! For Beginner's Mind to be more than a game or an idea, for you to really understand and know it, you need to practice it, to internalize it. Then Beginner's Mind becomes a valuable mind-set not just words on a screen.

In our more familiar technical terms, flight instructors are told to beware of negative transference. This is where a previous learned thing is blocking the correct learning of a new item. A primary flight student turning the yoke on the ground to taxi left or right is the classic example. You have to be open to the new to grow. You have to have beginners mind to correctly perceive experiences. Don't filter the whole world through a tiny set of prejudices.

In addition to flight training, we need Beginner's Mind on every flight. The oil pressure needle is below 50 units of pressure. Try not to immediately assign a reason for the reading. Accept the reading. There are many possibilities, some you maybe have not thought of before. It is fine to make plans and to test theories, but do not decide that (say) the oil pump has broken. Staying fluid, staying open to possibilities, keeping Beginner's Mind will allow you to accept other reasons as you notice other facts.

As a beginner, you look for help and instruction and inspiration for what you want to do, for what you wish to become. Even when you've read every pilot book in the biggest library, you can still be a beginner, you can still learn. As editor of a book of aviation quotations, I have read a lot of aviation books. Sam had me expand my horizons, showed me to look further and use Beginner's Mind to continue to grow. A good university library can dig out papers with titles like In flight Decision Making by High Time and Low Time Pilots During Instrument Operations (seems pilot training could be improved with event-based learning but what causes the variations in judgments between high-time pilots is not known, Kemper, 1992.) But as an example of looking further Sam found these words in an 1871 mountaineering book by Edward Whymper called Scrambles Amongst the Alps: "Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end."

There are a lot of quotes on this website from Zen masters, none of whom have ever flown an aircraft. But many things in aviation are like the supposedly simple Zen teachings that are so mind bendingly confusing when put onto paper. The ground school instructor talks for hours of the sum and resultant of the forces present in a level turn. Slipping and skidding. You draw out vector diagrams. You learn of lateral accelerations and the slip-skid inclinometer. Then when you actually get into an airplane your flight instructor shows you the ball and says only "step on the ball." The theory is confusingly complicated. The master teacher mysteriously simple. Step on the ball. All this physics and theory is for an action that can only be learnt yourself. First by looking at the ball, then by mental rehearsal, then by feel, then it all simply becomes second nature. Applying pressure on the rudders to coordinate the turn becomes an action you internalize and end up not thinking about. A master pilot's feet just move on the rudders into the turn without the mind really knowing about it.

One of the joys of being an airline pilot is always flying with somebody in the cockpit. I could be rude and say that with some new first officers it is instant Beginner's Mind, but what I really mean is it often can force another viewpoint onto whatever we are looking at. And sometimes I wonder why I didn't think of that? Why did I see something, yawn, and automatically file it away in my pea brain as 'x' rather than accepting just the thing itself. Flying with new people all the time forces some Beginner's Mind onto you. Test pilot and moonwalker Gene Cernan told a reporter, "prepare for the unknown, unexpected and inconceivable . . . after 50 years of flying I'm still learning every time I fly." If he is, I must.

Thinking again of cups, there are said to be four kinds. The upside-down cup into which water never can flow. The cup with the hole in the bottom, where the water flows in, then flows straight out. The full cup, which can accept no new water. And the empty cup. Consider again what kind of cup you need to be—what Beginner's Mind attitude you must have—to learn the art of inner airmanship.

I have learned the novice can often see things that the expert overlooks. All that is necessary is not to be afraid of making mistakes, or of appearing naive.

— Abraham Maslow

Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing.

— Thomas H. Huxley

Throughout Apollo, everybody I knew was always saying, "What if?" and, "Is it possible that this could happen?" And, "What will we do?" Just that process of continually questioning built your confidence in your ability to handle whatever comes along.

— Neil Armstrong

A man's errors are his portals of discovery.

— James Joyce

Not even the angels stand higher than the man who took the wrong way and then returned.

— Talmudic saying

Don’t be too proud to take lessons. I’m not.

— Jack Nicklaus

When you're green, you're growing. When you're ripe, you rot.

— Ray Kroc

Flying is always a challenge if you try to make every flight the best one you've ever had. Be motivated to do better each time you climb into an aircraft—this helps keep the experience fresh and rewarding.

— Bob Hoover

Most people are just trying to get through the day. Be committed to learn to get from the day. Don’t just get through it; get from it. Learn from it. Let the day teach you. Join the university of life. What a difference that will make in your future. Commit yourself to learning. Commit yourself to absorbing. Be like a sponge. Get it. Don’t miss it.

— Jim Rohn

Mastery is not perfection, but rather a journey, and the true master must be willing to try and fail and try again.

— George Leonard

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

— Isaac Newton

A sailor’s joys are as simple as a child’s.

— Bernard Moitessier

The earth teaches us more about ourselves than do all the books. Because it resists us. Man discovers himself when he measures himself against the obstacle. But to do so he needs a tool, a saw, or a plow. The farmer, in his labour, slowly coaxes out a few of nature's secrets, and the truths he unearths are universal. In the same way the airplane, tool of the airlines, involves man in all the old problems.

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything.  In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few.

— Shunryu Suzuki

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