 The Parable of the Full Cup A university professor went to see a Zen master. While the master was quietly serving tea, the professor talked about Zen. The master poured his visitors' cup to the brim, and then he kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he could no longer restrain himself. It is over full! No more will go in! The professor blurted. The Zen master simply replied, Like this cup, you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you about Zen unless you first empty your cup? The professor got the message, took a deep breath, and nodded. The master continued, See not one thing as a thing, but all of the possibilities of what it may be. A cup is a cup in your mind. To someone else, it could become a weapon. It could even be a hat. In this moment, it is a river. And now let us drink from the river of wisdom. He stopped pouring, and both of them picked up their tea. Uh, what about the mess? The professor asked. The Zen master simply looked at him and said, Let go of it, and let it be. The Parable of the Full Cup is a great reminder that in order to learn and receive wisdom, we have to be humble, to empty our mind, and make room for the new. Like all Zen cones, this one explains a very simple concept, that learning a new skill requires an open mind. Far too often, we think we know everything, especially as we begin to get better at a skill. But in reality, every time we approach something new, we come at it with preconceived notions that we learned from our childhood or society. Spirituality is a great example of this. When people first approach it, a lot of us do so from a skeptical point of view. After all, until you've personally experienced the value of meditation or the chakras within you, the whole idea of energy centers in our body that can't be shown physically can seem crazy. And maybe there is something to the idea that our perception influences how much we really see, or at least allow ourselves to see. After all, people say seeing is believing, but believing is what allows you to see by exposing you to new ways of thinking. In the words of Henry Thoreau, when any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before. Sometimes it can feel as though we know everything about a topic, but we should remember that knowing is usually done from within one's own perspective, and while someone may know everything about something, it is only from their point of view. It is only by exposing oneself to new ideas, new people, theories and ways of thinking that we can really grow as individuals. Zen Buddhist missionary, Shunru Suzuki Roshi, once said that, in the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities. In the experts, there are few. Is there a lesson here that when we come at a problem with a full mind, we can't hope to solve it? In other words, if our mind is so full of preconditions about how to solve something, maybe sometimes there isn't enough room for discovering the actual answer. Perhaps then the ultimate lesson of this parable can be expressed by another Zen proverb, that knowledge is the act of learning something every day, but wisdom is the act of letting something go every day.