|
Message |
| Posted By: |
UT |
| Date: |
20-Oct-2007-10:41:50 |
| Subject: |
What Impresses Me In A Spiritual Teacher Or Path |
Written for another forum, as part of an ongoing challenge there to see if we can write something positive about spirituality that doesn't, at the same time, rag negatively on something else. I thought I'd repost it here to see what kinds of things impress you guys about the teachers and paths you've run across in your lives. - Unc
Trying to take my own advice for a change, and
write something positive, I've decided to rap a bit
about the things I find impressive or laudable or
just plain fun in the spiritual teachers I run into,
or in the students who follow them, or in the paths
that they represent.
This is a bit of a stretch for me because, unlike
many here, I'm not in the market for a teacher or
a formal spiritual path. I walked away from the last
one a decade ago, and don't really have any interest
in finding another. So when I *do* run into spiritual
teachers and their students and their paths, it's
almost always out of curiosity -- wondering what
they're all about and how they do their thing.
So with that caveat taken care of, here are a few of
the things I've found interesting in the teachers and
students and paths my curiosity has drawn me to. And
because this could turn out to become a fairly long
list before I can post it on Saturday morning, I've
even put 'headings' on the different sections, so
you can skip to the sections that interest you. :-)
Three Little Words
After so many years in spiritual trips in which the
opposite was true, one of the things that impresses me
the most is finding a teacher or a group of seekers
who can speak aloud those three magical little words,
"I don't know." Those three words speak volumes, about
the individual speaking them, about his or her humility
and clarity of self-assessment, and about the tradition
they represent. Someone who can say "I don't know" is
someone I can identify with and learn from, because
I don't know, either.
Sensayuma
I like humor. I like laughter, and those who like it, too.
To me the ability to laugh -- and at the silliest things,
or at the things that others take Far Too Seriously -- is
one of the only valid indicators of someone's place on the
scale of evolution or state of consciousness. As far as I
can tell, life was designed (whether it was designed or
just turned out this way is immaterial to this discussion)
to present us with a never-ending series of opportunities
to laugh. Laughter, to me, is the sound that the Tao makes
when one is in tune with its flow. So I like funny teachers,
who laugh and crack jokes a lot. I like funny students, who
have learned this invaluable secret from those teachers.
And I like paths that value laughter, and see it as an
indicator that you're doing something right.
No Favorites
I like teachers who treat everyone the same, and who have
no obvious "favorites" or "best students" or "higher-ups"
within their organizations. Everybody's equal, *including*
the teacher. Those who strive to get more of the teacher's
attention than the other students get don't get any more
attention. Those who play the hide-in-plain-sight-and-hope-
that-the-teacher-notices-my-humility card get ignored, too,
and wind up getting just as much attention as everyone
else, no matter what card *they* might be playing.
Field Trips
I tend to like teachers who get *out* in the world, and
who take their students with them. The world has much to
offer in terms of spiritual teaching, and I tend to reson-
ate with teachers who perceive as many opportunities to
teach and learn *outside* the ashram as they do inside it.
I particularly like teachers who take their students to
places that the students do not necessarily consider
"spiritual" -- to the movies, to music events, on power
walks through the red light district of Amsterdam, to
an elegant restaurant or to Fatburger, to the New York
Stock Exchange at the height of trading frenzy. Those
places, many of them noisy and frenetic, have *just* as
much silence and eternity in them as the ashram does, or
as serene mountaintops do, or as cathedrals do, and I
like teachers who realize this and attempt to share
that realization with their students.
Self Sufficiency
I like teachers who never apologize for what they are, or
try to defend it; they're content to make their own decis-
ions in life and then live with them. I like even more
those teachers who cultivate that same quality in their
students. This often takes the form of refusing to tell
them how to live or what to believe or what to do in X
situation, no matter how much the students plead with the
teacher to do just that. I think that [a teacher] was onto
something in the early days of his teaching by saying that
making a student's decisions for them just makes them
weaker, and thus is not in their best interest. So I like
teachers who encourage or even force their students to
make their own decisions. And who then react to hearing
*about* a student's self-made decision -- even if that
decision is to stop studying with that teacher -- with
equanimity. "You're staying...that's good." "You're
leaving...that's good."
Walking The Talk
I like teachers who walk the walk of their talk. If they
teach the value of ethical behavior, they should at least
make an effort to be ethical themselves. If they teach
the value of selfless giving and of donating some part of
one's time and money to others, they should actually do
it themselves. If they teach the value of celibacy for
their students they should be celibate themselves; if they
teach the value of getting laid to their students they
should probably be gettin' a little themselves. If in
their teachings they make generalizations about the
people in the outside world (those who don't study with
them) and how they think, they should actually have sat
down and talked with some of these people recently.
Loving What They Do
I like teachers who are in love with teaching. They don't
spend much time talking about how tough it is to be a
spiritual teacher, in a world that doesn't appreciate or
value spiritual teachers. Been there, done that, don't need
to hear more about it. I like teachers who have suffered
all the slings and arrows that the world has thrown at them
and who are still out there in the streets, mingling with
the very people who slung the slings and shot the arrows,
still teaching *anyway*. I like teachers who put as much
care -- or more -- into their introductory talks for begin-
ners as they do their advanced lectures for long-time
followers. I like teachers who see teaching as a kind of
Zen artform, something to be pursued but never achieved,
like pouring the perfect cup of tea for the perfect guest.
Sensayuma
It's important enough to be included twice. If the teacher
doesn't crack me up and make me laugh out loud one or two
times during his or her talk or satsang or retreat, I'm
probably just not going to be interested in attending
a second one.
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