In a Kyoto tea ceremony school, I once watched a woman who had been practicing for thirty years prepare to make tea. Before entering the tearoom, she paused at the threshold, took a slow breath, and bowed—not to the room, but to the possibility that today's preparation might teach her something new. Her teacher later explained this ritual: 'Every time we make tea, it is the first time. The water is different, the season has shifted, our hearts have changed. If we think we already know, we miss what is actually here.' This captures the essence of shoshin—not the naive enthusiasm of someone who knows nothing, but the disciplined openness of someone who knows enough to understand how much they don't know. The master swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, undefeated in sixty duels, wrote that he approached each fight as if picking up a sword for the first time. Not because he forgot his training, but because his expertise had taught him that each moment contained infinite variables his accumulated knowledge couldn't predict. In Zen temples, monks who have sat in meditation for decades still begin each session by settling into their posture as if they've never sat before. They understand that yesterday's insights can become today's blindness if held too tightly.