Empty Your Cup

Below is an excerpt from the Budo Beyond Technique blog. If you click here, you can read the whole article. Please pay a visit.
 
Student Responsibility

Budo is about becoming the best you can be. We use martial arts as our method to do this. Since we always strive to be better, we will be a student for life. Here are a few things to help be a better student.

1. Empty your cup.

You have probably heard this saying before. One of the most popular versions of the origination of this saying is:

A professor visited a Zen master to inquire about Zen. As the master was speaking the professor kept interrupting with his own opinions. So the master served some tea. He overfilled the cup and tea went everywhere. The professor shouted "the cup is full, there is no room for more tea!" The master replied "like this cup, your mind is so full of its own opinions, there is no room for anything new, in order to taste my tea, you must first empty your cup."

You have come to learn. The best way to do that is forget when you know or think you know. If you have no martial arts experience, it may be easier then if you have some already and change to a different martial art. Having studied several different styles, I still have to remind myself to "empty my cup" and learn and do that particular style. If the class is learning a technique you know already, look for a deeperunderstanding of the technique. How can you make it more effective, efficient, powerful, etc.