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Bad Boys
When it comes to spiritual teachers, there are those who are safe, gentle, consoling, soothing, caring; and there are the outlaws, the living terrors, the Rude Boys and Nasty Girls of God realization, the men and women who are in your face, disturbing you, terrifying you, until you radically awaken to who and what you really are. And may I suggest: choose your teachers carefully.
If you want encouragement, soft smiles, ego stroking, gentle caresses of your self-contracting ways, pats on the back and sweet words of solace, find yourself a Nice Guy or Good Girl, and hold their hand on the sweet path of stress reduction and egoic comfort. But if you want Enlightenment, if you want to wake up, if you want to get fried in the fire of passionate Infinity, then, I promise you: find yourself a Rude Boy or a Nasty Girl, the ones who make you uncomfortable in their presence, who scare you witless, who will turn on you in a second and hold you up for ridicule, who will make you wish you were never born, who will offer you not sweet comfort but abject terror, not saccharin solace but scorching angst, for then, just then, you might very well be on the path to your own Original Face.
Most of us, I suspect, prefer our spiritual teachers to be of the Nice-Guy variety. Soft, comforting, non-threatening, a source of succor for a worn and weary soul, a safe harbor in the samsaric storm. There is nothing wrong with that, of course; spirituality comes in all sorts of flavors, and I have known some awfully Nice Guys. But if the flavor tends toward Enlightenment instead of consolation, if it drifts away from soothing dreams toward actually waking up, if it rumbles toward a God realization and not egoic fortification, then that demands a brutal, shocking death: a literal death of your separate self, a painful, frightening, horrifying dissolution, a miraculous extinction you will actually witness as you expand into the boundless, formless, radical Truth that will pervade your every cell and drench your being to the core and expand what you thought was your self until it embraces the distant galaxies. For only on the other side of death lies Spirit, only on the other side of egoic slaughter lies the Good and the True and the Beautiful. "You will come in due course to realize that your true glory lies where you cease to exist," as the illustrious Sri Ramana Maharshi constantly reminded us. Your true glory lies on the other side of your death, and who will show you that?
Not the Nice Guys and not the Good Girls. They don't want to hurt your feelings. They don't want to upset you. They are here to whisper sweet nothings in your ear and place consolation prizes in the outstretched hand of the self-contraction, balm for a war-torn weary ego, techniques to prop it up in its constant battle with the world of otherness. In a sense, it's very easy being a Nice-Guy teacher: no muss, no fuss, no wrestling with egoic resistance and exhausting confrontation. Be nice to the ego, pat it on the back, have it count its breaths, hum a few mantras.
Rude Boys know better. They are not here to console but to shatter, not to comfort but to demolish. They are uncompromising, brutal, laser-like. They are in your face until you recognize your Original Face, and they simply will not back off, they will not back down, they will not let up until you let go, radically, fully, completely, unhesitatingly. They live as Compassion, real compassion, not idiot compassion, and real compassion uses a sword more often than a sweet. They deeply offend the ego (and the greater the offense, the bigger the ego). They are alive as Truth, they are everywhere confronted with egos, and they choose the former uncompromisingly.
Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt Therapy, used to say that nobody comes to a therapist to get better (although they always say they do); they really come to perfect their neurosis. Just so, nobody comes to a spiritual teacher to get Enlightenment (although everybody claims they do); rather, they come to a spiritual teacher to learn more subtle and sophisticated egoic games, in this case, the game of "Look at me being really spiritual."
After all, what is it in you that brings you to a spiritual teacher in the first place? It's not the Spirit in you, since that is already enlightened and has no need to seek. No, it is the ego in you that brings you to a teacher: you want to see yourself in the presence of the spiritual game, you want to meet yourself tomorrow as a realized being, in plain language, you want your ego to continue into a spiritual paradise.
And what's a poor teacher to do, confronted with such egoic cunning? Everybody who comes to a spiritual teacher comes egoically motivated. And teachers have two choices in the face of this onslaught of the separate selves, this conference of the self-contractions: they can play to the audience, or they can blow the entire building up...
If all you want is consolation, soothing prayers, ruffle-free platitudes, "It will all be okay." Well, it will not be okay if you want Enlightenment. It will, in fact, be hell, and only Rude Boys are rude enough to tell you that, and to show you that, if you can stand the rudeness, stay in the fire, burn clean as Infinity and radiate as the stars.
Every deeply enlightened teacher I have known has been a Rude Boy or Nasty Girl. The original Rude Boys were, of course, the great Zen masters, who, when faced with yet another ego claiming to want Enlightenment, would get a huge stick and whack the aspirant right between the eyes. And that was just the beginning, that was the easy part; things got nastier fast, but at the other end of that brutality lay ever-present Realization, a shocking jolting death of the self and the radiant resurrection of infinite Spirit as your very own true nature: if you could stand the heat. Rude Boys are on your case in the worst way, they breathe fire, eat hot coals, will roast your ass in a screaming second and fry your ego before you knew what hit it: undo your self-contracting fear and sizzle your well-honed defenses: if you can stand the heat...
- Ken Wilber
If you want encouragement, soft smiles, ego stroking, gentle caresses of your self-contracting ways, pats on the back and sweet words of solace, find yourself a Nice Guy or Good Girl, and hold their hand on the sweet path of stress reduction and egoic comfort. But if you want Enlightenment, if you want to wake up, if you want to get fried in the fire of passionate Infinity, then, I promise you: find yourself a Rude Boy or a Nasty Girl, the ones who make you uncomfortable in their presence, who scare you witless, who will turn on you in a second and hold you up for ridicule, who will make you wish you were never born, who will offer you not sweet comfort but abject terror, not saccharin solace but scorching angst, for then, just then, you might very well be on the path to your own Original Face.
Most of us, I suspect, prefer our spiritual teachers to be of the Nice-Guy variety. Soft, comforting, non-threatening, a source of succor for a worn and weary soul, a safe harbor in the samsaric storm. There is nothing wrong with that, of course; spirituality comes in all sorts of flavors, and I have known some awfully Nice Guys. But if the flavor tends toward Enlightenment instead of consolation, if it drifts away from soothing dreams toward actually waking up, if it rumbles toward a God realization and not egoic fortification, then that demands a brutal, shocking death: a literal death of your separate self, a painful, frightening, horrifying dissolution, a miraculous extinction you will actually witness as you expand into the boundless, formless, radical Truth that will pervade your every cell and drench your being to the core and expand what you thought was your self until it embraces the distant galaxies. For only on the other side of death lies Spirit, only on the other side of egoic slaughter lies the Good and the True and the Beautiful. "You will come in due course to realize that your true glory lies where you cease to exist," as the illustrious Sri Ramana Maharshi constantly reminded us. Your true glory lies on the other side of your death, and who will show you that?
Not the Nice Guys and not the Good Girls. They don't want to hurt your feelings. They don't want to upset you. They are here to whisper sweet nothings in your ear and place consolation prizes in the outstretched hand of the self-contraction, balm for a war-torn weary ego, techniques to prop it up in its constant battle with the world of otherness. In a sense, it's very easy being a Nice-Guy teacher: no muss, no fuss, no wrestling with egoic resistance and exhausting confrontation. Be nice to the ego, pat it on the back, have it count its breaths, hum a few mantras.
Rude Boys know better. They are not here to console but to shatter, not to comfort but to demolish. They are uncompromising, brutal, laser-like. They are in your face until you recognize your Original Face, and they simply will not back off, they will not back down, they will not let up until you let go, radically, fully, completely, unhesitatingly. They live as Compassion, real compassion, not idiot compassion, and real compassion uses a sword more often than a sweet. They deeply offend the ego (and the greater the offense, the bigger the ego). They are alive as Truth, they are everywhere confronted with egos, and they choose the former uncompromisingly.
Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt Therapy, used to say that nobody comes to a therapist to get better (although they always say they do); they really come to perfect their neurosis. Just so, nobody comes to a spiritual teacher to get Enlightenment (although everybody claims they do); rather, they come to a spiritual teacher to learn more subtle and sophisticated egoic games, in this case, the game of "Look at me being really spiritual."
After all, what is it in you that brings you to a spiritual teacher in the first place? It's not the Spirit in you, since that is already enlightened and has no need to seek. No, it is the ego in you that brings you to a teacher: you want to see yourself in the presence of the spiritual game, you want to meet yourself tomorrow as a realized being, in plain language, you want your ego to continue into a spiritual paradise.
And what's a poor teacher to do, confronted with such egoic cunning? Everybody who comes to a spiritual teacher comes egoically motivated. And teachers have two choices in the face of this onslaught of the separate selves, this conference of the self-contractions: they can play to the audience, or they can blow the entire building up...
If all you want is consolation, soothing prayers, ruffle-free platitudes, "It will all be okay." Well, it will not be okay if you want Enlightenment. It will, in fact, be hell, and only Rude Boys are rude enough to tell you that, and to show you that, if you can stand the rudeness, stay in the fire, burn clean as Infinity and radiate as the stars.
Every deeply enlightened teacher I have known has been a Rude Boy or Nasty Girl. The original Rude Boys were, of course, the great Zen masters, who, when faced with yet another ego claiming to want Enlightenment, would get a huge stick and whack the aspirant right between the eyes. And that was just the beginning, that was the easy part; things got nastier fast, but at the other end of that brutality lay ever-present Realization, a shocking jolting death of the self and the radiant resurrection of infinite Spirit as your very own true nature: if you could stand the heat. Rude Boys are on your case in the worst way, they breathe fire, eat hot coals, will roast your ass in a screaming second and fry your ego before you knew what hit it: undo your self-contracting fear and sizzle your well-honed defenses: if you can stand the heat...
- Ken Wilber
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Comments
But the greatest part of me knows from experience, that you are absolutely spot-on...
It is those who, refusing to pander to the "woe is me, treat me gently" pseudo-fragile protestation, but who instead drench us with a verbal bucket of freezing water, who evoke the most dramatic and profoundly constructive response....
I have had it done to me. I have in turn, done it to others. And much as we would all like to learn 'The Way', being fanned with ostrich-feather fans and being fed the Dharma, peeled-grape fashion, this is by far more productive, more profound and more effective a way of learning....!
Bravo.
I can't BELIEVE you brought up Ken Wilber! You beat me to it. As usual, you're ten steps ahead of me. I've been reading "The Essential" for months. He is my favourite writer in the universe. I was going to start a thread with part of his "Sleep, Dreams, and Dreamless Sleep" from "One Taste". Its so beautiful. I've never read anything that has touched and calmed me more than his writing.
Bravo indeed. This particular passage has really given me an understanding of what to look out for if I ever find a teacher. I haven't read it before. We have to be brave, don't we?
"I'm not going to stop being nice to you..."
But that would imply that I am your teacher, and I'd sound as if I was trying to elevate myself, which I wouldn't dream of doing, because as far as I'm concerned, we're all in this together, and we're all learning from and teaching each other....
....So I won't. :rolleyesc
- Joshu (Zhaozhou)
That I don't know about, but certainly being obstinate helps.
Ortega said in his SOME LESSONS IN METAPHYSICS that OUR LIVES are the fundament of reality, not our SELVES. Therefore, the ego, or self, is secondary. AND...
the ego, in some, is not so strong, so there's better ways. The one-thinking-righ-cheer likes teachers who are not dependent on their students for security. It's their egos that one must worry about.
Let me in my life have the grace and the space to follow wisely the noble eightfold path...
Let Thy Very Name Be Bliss!
(That's my You-Go.)
Genryu,
That's good because obstinate I can do. Naturally.
um - isn't there a baby level where people won't hit me? (spiritually or physically?)
Catholic schools were notorious for the brutality of their punishment regimes, as I know from my short time at Stonyhurst.
Educators and educationalists agree that corporal punishment is counter-productive in the learning process.
I am not arguing that teachers should all be Nice, etc. I am saying that, within our cultural ambit, being hit with a stick for a wrong answer or a dozing meditation is unacceptable.
But, 'and I may be wrong, I am sometimes - I assumed that in the post, the hitting with a stick was a metaphor? Or are we talking actual physical harm?
And yes, Simon, the beatings adminstered by catholic nuns has to be witnessed to be believed!
Quite so. Luckily no Buddhist tradition uses abuse or physical punishment as training. All Buddhist traditions do though understand that soft words and seeming kindness are not always the most compassionate response. I'm sure you're familiar with the old story about the student who went to a teacher, and said, "I really really want to know God, Reality, Who I am..." The student continued on at length about his experiences, his beliefs and so on. Suddenly, the teacher jumped up, grabbed him by the neck and plunged his head into a nearby trough full of water. He let the student up after a little while, and as the shaken student tried to regain his breath, he said, "When you want to know God as much as you wanted air just now, then come back to me."
The sword of compassion may be intended to benefit all beings, but it sure looks scary.
By Eido Frances Carney Roshi
The first time I ever did zazen--Zen meditation--was at Tassajara Mountain Center, in the heart of Big Sur country, shortly after its famous founder, Suzuki Roshi, died in 1971. David Chadwick, a student of Suzuki's and his biographer, gave zazen instruction. I was able to sit quite well, but I had definite fear after seeing the kyosaku, the discipline stick.
At morning zazen, the sound of kyosaku pierced the glorious spring air. Quiet footsteps roamed the zendo until suddenly there was a swish, a heart-piercing CRACK, and a swish. Some incredible encounter seemed to be happening in pockets around the room. I could not imagine what would induce someone to place themselves in such a vulnerable circumstance. And yet, here I was on the same kind of cushion, except it was announced that new people would not be hit. I trusted them to keep their promise.
The kyosaku, or keisaku, is a long heavy stick that is used to strike people on the soft muscle of the shoulders to encourage them toward awakening. It represents the bodhisattva Manjushri's sword of wisdom; the means to cut through delusion. When people sit a very long time, their muscles become tired. A strike with the kyosaku can relax and revive the muscles that are fundamental to holding the mudra--the posture of the hands during zazen--and the posture of awareness. It is never a punishment; rather it is that which promotes the practice-experience of awakening.
Hearing the sound of kyosaku for the first time made me doubt the way of zazen. It made Zen seem fierce, extreme, confrontational. And this practice was, for me, the final place. My eggs were all in one basket. I felt I had run out of avenues, and if I didn't find answers here, I saw no other possibilities. I wanted to know what it meant to pass through the gate. Zen had been going on for eons and others--thousands of nuns and monks and laypeople, matriarchs, patriarchs, named and unnamed--had come through this gate. I wanted to know what they knew. I wanted to experience what they experienced.
Shortly after that experience at Tassajara, I met my first teacher, Kobun Chino Otogawa Roshi, who was teaching at Haiku Zendo, a small practice center in a private home in Los Altos, California. I told him immediately that the sound of kyosaku terrified me. I said that I thought the only way to overcome the fear was to experience kyosaku directly. I trusted he would not cause me injury. Would he please show me how kyosaku felt? He agreed and said he would show me during zazen.
Each fiber of my body sat alert and tense. Three bells rang to begin the period of zazen, and there was no leaving then, just a waiting for the particular moment. Time passed and then a small swish of garment as Roshi got up from his cushion and moved agonizingly slowly around the zendo and then stood directly behind me. I felt him completely present at my back, and I waited for the strike. And I waited. And waited. And waited.
Nothing happened. His silence was the point. He was showing me, with compassion and kindness, that the stick itself was empty, that the one holding the stick and the one sitting were both empty. And resonating with buddha-nature. He did not have to use the stick in order to show me its meaning. All my fear vanished.
Slowly, in the silence of the empty, no-striking kyosaku, Kobun Chino's teaching washed through me. Mind-to-mind transmission from teacher to student, the circle of lineage balanced on the shoulders the bodhisattva Manjushri. Here, without words, the mind-to-mind transmission erased all fear and the gate fell away. No basket. No eggs.
- Ven Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede
Chicago Zen Center
Opening ceremony of sesshin: With three intonations of the big bell, Sensei Kjolhede and the two monitors enter the zendo, bow as one, and proceed toward the altar. The creaking of oak floor boards and the faint rustle of robes are the only sounds; the other fifty participants sit motionless and silent, all eyes down. Alone, the head monitor approaches the altar holding up the figure of Manjusri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, who sits cross-legged brandishing a sword. Placing him high on the stand, he bows and returns to the procession. The two monitors then approach the altar together. With a swift flourish they take up the two flattened sticks on the altar and place them down, their handles now on Manjusri’s right. They bow, and another sesshin is underway.
At the Rochester Zen Center as well as at many Zen temples in Japan and China, few elements of sesshin are more important than the use of the kyosaku, or encouragement stick. Yet it is probably the most misunderstood feature of traditional Zen training. Countless readers of books about Zen have become prejudiced toward the stick by the words of authors who themselves have no experience with it. The stick has suffered perhaps more abuse at the hands of such outsiders than any Zen trainee has had to deal with from the stick itself. The denunciation of it as a “sadistic expression of Japanese culture,” in the words of one author, is as historically misleading as it is unjust. The stick was widely used in China long before Zen was transplanted from there to Japan, and it may go back even further. As mentioned in The Three Pillars of Zen, it is “probably a hardier descendant of a small rod used even in the Buddha’s day to awaken dozing monks, and constructed so as to whistle when shaken beside the ears.”
Some Zen students might object, on principle, to the stick. Why? Isn’t it because the stick involves two people, who then are all too easily seen as adversaries? No doubt the primal human delusion of self-and-other is deeply nurtured in the West by the dualism that has long been one of our basic cultural assumptions. If we see the kyosaku as pain coming from a wholly separate entity, as our senses tell us, then we readily presume some form of malice behind it, which in turn generates fear and other negative reactions. The stick teaches us that we get through pain and fear not by clinging to an “I” that separates us from them but by becoming one with them. What teaching could be of greater value in today’s world of unremitting conflict and misery?
In sesshin no one may ask for the stick; it is used only at the discretion of the monitors, who try to apply it with the force, tempo and frequency best suited to each individual. When this practice was adopted at the Center many years ago, sesshins acquired a whole new level of power. It eliminated the need to ask oneself, every time the monitors came around with the stick, “Should I ask for it or not?” a cogitative exercise that easily draws one into the web of ego’s machinations and other discriminative processes that interfere with concentration. At the same time, sitters who had relied on the sense of control that comes from asking for the stick had to make a crucial psychological adjustment. They had to transcend the dualistic notion of simply “bearing up” under a stick wielded by some separate self, and realize that sitter, monitor, and the stick were working together.
In the formalized setting of sesshin, the stick has the power to help Zen students “let go their hold on the cliff.” The following excerpt from a kensho account that appears in Zen: Merging of East and West reveals how important the sound alone can be in nudging the mind beyond itself:
The kyosaku whacked me whenever it whacked anyone in the Zendo and the bells and wind and cicadas were all in my own mind and Mu and Mu and I would not stop. One final whack in some part of my mind across the room on someone else’s shoulders brought finality and I was wrenched into a black, black ego-shattering paroxysm of Mu, Mu, Mu. And it happened a second time and I did not yield to the temptation to rest in anything called “glorious” or “I am there” (…) I saw that nothing in the universe existed that could separate me from the totality of deathless being with which I now knew mySelf to be one!
To more fully understand the role of the stick in sesshin, one may first look to the sesshin altar. The Buddha figure, which represents our intrinsically enlightened Mind, the nothing-lacking, Essential nature common to all of us, recedes for now into the background, the altar curtains remaining drawn until the closing ceremony. It is Manjusri, a bodhisattva engaged in the ceaseless struggle to vanquish the forces of delusion, who, from his pedestal temporarily installed at the front of the altar, presides over sesshin. His vow is, “All beings, without number, I vow to liberate,” and not until that final battle is won will he rest. If the Buddha represents the Peace of ultimate freedom − freedom from which we are separated only by our wrong thinking − Manjusri, in his sword-wielding pose, may be seen as representative of the courage and exertion required to realize that freedom.
Manjusri’s preeminence during sesshin reminds participants of the numberless dharma gates still standing before them even as it reminds them that they too have the means for passing through those gates. Manjusri warns us not to fall into “buji Zen” − the fatal error of assuring ourselves that since we are all intrinsically Buddhas, there is nothing to strive for. With the Buddha in eclipse, sesshin is no time to sit back and bask in one’s inner light of original buddhahood. True, “from the beginning all beings are Buddha,” but until we experientially realize this truth, it is not real. It is not true.
Sesshin involves far more daily sitting, more teisho, and more dokusan. But a powerful sesshin includes, in addition to this expanded schedule, an extraordinary intensification of effort. To this end, the use of the kyosaku is seen as indispensable. Why? First and most obviously there is the problem of sleepiness.
Although sleep restores the body-mind in one sense, it does not generate joriki, the unique psychic energy that grows out of intense mental absorption. Strenuous sitting builds joriki by focusing and conserving energies that would otherwise be dispersed through sleep, and this is how sesshin participants are able to do with far less sleep than normal. Still, as with any other human effort, sitting cannot be sustained at peak intensity, and periods of drowsiness and torpidity are inevitable. This is where the stick comes in, one of our chief allies in the battle against “the demon of sleep,” as Zen master Hakuin called it. Nor is it just the fact of being struck that wakes one up. The specific points on the shoulders where one is struck are on an acupuncture meridian connected to the lower belly (“hara” or “tanden” in Japanese) which when stimulated liberate psychic energy.
As daunting an obstacle as tiredness may be, the most relentless challenge in zazen is simply thought itself. Besides the run-of-the-mill random, irrelevant thoughts that buzz in the mind so much of the time, there are some common patterns, such as the sense of being caught in a stubborn duality of subject-object, seer-seen − the relentlessly kibitzing mind. One may also reach a state in which it seems impossible to either advance or retreat, the mind as if frozen. A well-aimed blow with the stick can give one the burst of energy needed to break out of such mental impasses. In this sense the stick becomes Manjusri’s own sword, a sword which when wielded no-mindedly can sunder the bonds that obstruct the sitter. The transcendental wisdom with which we are all endowed, represented by Manjusri, may be seen as none other that the absence of delusive thought. Manjusri-as-monitor helps liberate the Manjusri in each sitter, cutting out the thought-sustenance of the ego to reveal True-mind.
Almost any form of makyo will likewise evaporate under the compassionate force of the stick: fantasies, illusory sensations, hallucinations, and obstructive psychological states, including euphoria. The stick can also help one see through fears − even ancient, lifelong fears − and banish them forever. With fear, however, the sitter’s ego will sometimes seize the stick and use it for its own purposes by turning the monitor and his or her stick into the object of fear. If this fear is a mild one, the continued use of the stick can itself help one overcome it; but if it is seriously distracting to the sitter, he or she must be left alone. It is for such cases that sitters are told in sesshin (the only time the stick is used without the sitter asking for it) to write a note to the monitors if any problems develop with the stick. Mutual trust between monitor and sitter is absolutely essential in order for the stick to be truly helpful.
The stick may be applied to rouse a sleepy sitter, enliven a weary one, or spur on one who is striving hard, but under no circumstances is it used for punishment or out of any sense of malice. Never. Every strike of the stick is an affirmation of faith in the sitter. Each “Whack, whack! Whack, whack!” may be heard as, “The energy of the whole universe is yours! You can work harder! You can go deeper! You, too, can realize your innate perfection!”
The stick, then, is a means of focusing the energy and force of the monitors and the sesshin as a whole and transferring it to each sitter. Seen this way, the use of the stick is an act of true compassion. Sesshin participants turn a corner in their practice when they realize that the monitors, with Sensei, become their closest allies, their dearest friends.
It must never be forgotten that the monitors were once on the other end of the stick. Most of them spent years there, learning, through direct experience, that the stick is first and last an instrument of compassion. They know, as well as anyone can, the great value of the stick when it is accepted openly and trustingly, without fear or resentment. And out of this experience arises deep gratitude − gratitude not only to the monitors who actually encouraged them with it, but to one’s teacher and all of the teachers and masters before him who included the stick in their training methods as a means of liberating human beings and preserving the strength and vigor of the Zen sect.
It would be a mistake, however, to see the stick as a panacea, effective for every Zen student without exception. There are men and women of such finely-tuned psyches that to use the stick on them would be more a hindrance than a help. Pregnant women are not hit, as we don’t really know how it would affect the fetus. There are also those for whom the stick elicits deeply painful memories of childhood physical abuse. Although the monitors well understand the need for leaving such people alone, it sometimes turns out that by giving the stick in a more or less token manner − very lightly and infrequently − they can help extinguish the negative associations with the stick and enable the sitter to overcome the fear entirely. In any case, it is not uncommon for a newcomer to take some time to learn to work with the stick.
Then there are those rare individuals who don’t need the stick. The Buddha is reported to have said, “A high-class horse moves at even the shadow of the whip,” and some such horses are still around. But how many? Some people are able to mobilize their inner resources to sit with great energy without the stick, and a few of them are able to use that energy to see “their face before their parents gave birth to them.” But it is all relative: aside from those who have special problems with the stick, who could deny that the stick might give them more energy?
The inscription on the wooden block outside the Zendo urges:
Great is the matter of birth and death;
Life slips quickly by.
Time waits for no one.
Wake up, wake up!
Don’t waste a moment!
At least until their initial breakthrough, average practitioners of Zen, like average horses, need all the help they can get.
Zen speaks of “the hen tapping from the outside while the chick pecks from the inside.” Though this generally refers to teacher and student working together, it may also be seen as the collaboration that occurs between monitor and sitter. Ideally the monitor and sitter are in a kind of communion in which each responds to the other’s exertions. It is a joint effort with the mutual respect and feelings of intimacy that grow out of their shared purpose. The trust and vulnerability implicit in the rows of backs turned to the monitor inspires in the latter a sense of sharing in a sacred trust. Sitters who can respond to the stick with the same trust and openness will find themselves fortified in “penetrating Dharma gates beyond measure.”
Your posts have said it all. far better than I could...
My teacher, the Venerable Then Sen (the Abbot), was actually beaten by his teacher for not being quick in learning his Pali chanting. Being the only Australian and English speaker in the temple, and having come to the monkhood late in life (no formal Buddhist training) I was the worst at my Pali, luckily my teacher didn't hit me!!!! He was disappointed with me though, which tore at my heart but inspired me to learn as much as I could. I think he felt imbarressed for me because I couldn't chant with the rest of my brothers and this made me look "stupid". After awhile of trying different things I found that if I just sat and listened to the others, I could eventually pick up on some of the Pali and piece it all together and then I would recite what I had learned to my teacher. He would then go on with the chant and "teach" me more. Even my Khmer improved until I could talk to him in a mixture of english/khmer.
I came to the Buddha (was he kind or harsh?) because I was in pain. My ego was already shattered and in pieces on the floor. I doubt any so-called Rude Boy could do any worse to me than I did to myself.
Besides does it matter why you go to a teacher, so long as you go?
...
The pointing out of the mind, the interaction with one's spiritual teacher, is one of openness and piercing and naked honesty. There is no hiding, and depending on the obstructions it can be a 'rough ride' for some.
I learned from them. I should have been mentally and emotionally as scarred as I was physically but I haven't been. Quite the opposite they've had a positive effect. Given the choice I would have avoided those experiences at any cost at all .... but having had them, I discover that I have made the best of them.
Knitwitch,
You make an excellent point.
Things are going to happen to us that make us who we are. There is no getting around this.
But, while some of these experiences are difficult to live through and difficult to remember - they are still the sum of us.
What I find much more heartening is the person that recognizes these factors and uses them as tools of learning on their journey on the Path.
It is painful at times to recognize that part of what makes us who we are - is the same thing that has caused us to stumble in darkness our whole lives. But, how much more wonderful it is to finally recognize this fact and be able to remove these "afflictions" from our lives.
It can be likened to two people being debilitated by an internal disease. One person finds that it is possible (yet painful) to remove this disease from their body. The other does not. The former takes the painful steps to remove this disease from his body and find the ability to live life with a strength and vigor they had all but forgotton. The other does not - and lives the rest of their (short) life in pain.
I think that by living through the things you have - remembering the pain it caused you - can make you very mindful, helpful and compassionate of the pain others exist with.
Isn't there something about when life give you a bowl of lemons....
-bf
-bf
Palzang
I am a teacher of young children. They are SO eager to please and afraid to make mistakes!! I often tell them, "mistakes help us learn". Many times I will make a mistake...either on purpose or NOT...and point it out to the class...adults make mistakes too!!! (Even f we don't like to admit it!):o
Hey ZM
Tell me a couple of "good" things you have heard
-bf
I know this to be true, SG. Change is coming and we all know that Mother Church is always desperately slow to change. Understandable, of course. I doubt whether there is a Catholic school in the west which still uses the strap. It is, however, only 40 years ago that I spent aterm as a trainee teacher in a boarding school for boys which was run by a religious order. Corporal punishment was still used and some of the Fathers and the lay staff sent boys to be beaten on the hand.
It was unfortunate that, on the day I arrivbed at the school, a letter of mine was published in one of the London papers. The Plowden Report had called for the abolition of corporal punishment in primary schools (yes, under 12s were still given the slipper). A teacher in training had written to The Telegraph saying that it should be left to the wisdom of the teacher whether to use the sanction. Outraged, I dashed off a letter to the editor in which I compared the teacher, cane in hand, with a Chicago gangster: both got their own way by threatening violence. I even quoted from A. S. Neill! How likely was it that the Daily Fascist would print it? But they did, and the first I knew of it was when I was taken aside by the Headmaster and hauled over the coals. The term went downhill from there!
My parents both went to Catholic schools...my dad had experiences with the nuns..but mom was the perfect little student.
Nuns that live in the infirmary here today are hardly what I would call compassionate!
But at least the one I have to work with and report to is of the changed church...
Good stuff Sharpiegirl - I use that method myself - one because it makes sure my students are listening - and also because psychologically it helps them feel less disadvantaged, bearing in mind these are usually adults who have not been in a teacher/pupil relationship since school and this can be quite a frightening experience. So I want to put them on a more equal footing. It's also quite a laugh, reacting all surprised when they correct me, then slapping the forehead in mock realisation and thanking them. OK so my lessons are a bit unconventional but they work and I am teaching language not philosophy!
A school I went to prior to the earlier one I mentioned used to rap me over the knuckles for hitting a wrong note on the piano, now isn't it strange I no longer even attempt to play?
I will tell you how it is with me:
I too went to a Roman Catholic Boarding School. I was there for four years, and I wish I could say I have warm, fond and vivid memories of it.... But that would be 'Wrong Speech' - !! However, it pays to bear in mind that our experiences may shape who we are, and remain in the memory, right until our moment of Death.
This is not a problem, and that's what the mind is for.
However, their effect on us, is our responsibility.
if we permit something from a lifetime ago, to still affect how we feel about ourselves, and the 'Guilty Parties' - then however far in our dim and distant past they were, their long fingers still clutch our wrists and exert a control over our attitudes, views, thoughts and Selves in general.
They control you just as much as if you loved them dearly. Because off attachment, and not 'letting go.'
You probably already know this one but...
Some friends of mine had arranged for an encounter between two prominent visiting Buddhist teachers at the house of a Harvard University psychology professor. These were teachers from two distinctly different Buddhist traditions who had never met and whose traditions had in fact had very little contact over the past thousand years. Before the worlds of Buddhism and Western psychology could come together, the various strands of Buddhism would have to encounter one another. We were to witness the first such dialogue.
The teachers, seventy-year-old Kalu Rinpoche of Tibet, a veteran of years of solitary retreat, and the Zen master Seung Sahn, the first Korean Zen master to teach in the United States, were to test each other's understanding of the Buddha's teachings for the benefit of the onlooking Western students. This was to be a high form of what was being called "dharma combat," (the clashing of great minds sharpened by years of study and meditation), and we were waiting with all the anticipation that such a historic encounter deserved.
The two monks entered with swirling robes – maroon and yellow for the Tibetan, austere grey and black for the Korean – and were followed by retinues of younger monks and translators with shaven heads. They settled onto cushions in the familiar cross-legged positions, and the host made it clear that the younger Zen master was to begin. The Tibetan lama sat very still, fingering a wooden rosary (mala) with one hand while murmuring, "Om mani padme hum," continuously under his breath.
The Zen master, who was already gaining renown for his method of hurling questions at his students until they were forced to admit their ignorance and then bellowing, "Keep that don't know mind!" at them, reached deep inside his robes and drew out an orange. "What is this?" he demanded of the lama. "What is this?" This was a typical opening question, and we could feel him ready to pounce on whatever response he was given. The Tibetan sat quietly fingering his mala and made no move to respond.
"What is this?" the Zen master insisted, holding the orange up to the Tibetan's nose. Kalu Rinpoche bent very slowly to the Tibetan monk near to him who was serving as the translator, and they whispered back and forth for several minutes.
Finally the translator addressed the room: "Rinpoche says, 'What is the matter with him? Don't they have oranges where he comes from?' " The dialog progressed no further.
- From "Thoughts without a Thinker" by Mark Epstein
Suzuki’s wife, said that her husband was so single-minded and paid her so little attention that one day as he was preparing a lecture at Sokoji, she said to him: "I have a boyfriend."
"Good, bring him over," he told her. "I want to make sure he's right for you."
- Outtake from "To Shine One Corner of the World"
Keith
Keith
Perhaps one could be created....? I'm sure some of our forum members would relish the idea......
Keith