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seeking the teacher's approval
genkaku
Northampton, Mass. U.S.A. Veteran
I made this blog post today and thought I would post it here FWIW:
Taste is taste and I've got mine ...
In general, I don't like latter-day appreciations of Zen Buddhism. They are too frilly, too self-important, too slickly tricky-dick, too caring and sharing and compassionate without compassion for my taste. Too often they set aside what is important while donning the robes of importance. Sometimes I go so far as to become infuriated. As I say, it's just a matter of taste: I don't like anchovies either.
Nor yet do I like pimping for latter-day appreciations, crooning self-importantly about how powerful or profound or marvelous or on-the-mark they might be. Ick, ick and more ick. It's just my generalized taste.
But for every 'rule' there is an exception and I am not immune.
Today I read Zen monk Koun Franz' blog entry ("My Teacher Doesn't Get Me") and was touched. I was touched not because I thought he was right, especially, but rather by the fact that he took a shot at something I think of as a meat-and-potatoes issue in Zen (or perhaps any Buddhist) practice -- the desire on the part of the student to receive approval and love from his or her teacher.
Imagine: If love and approval on the part of the teaching were all Zen practice amounted to, how much better off could the student possibly be? Would s/he really be able to thank the teacher or would s/he instead simply be reconfirmed in the same old mind-set that brought him/her to Zen practice in the first place ... and Zen practice could be reduced to a self-aggrandizing hug festival? Tea and cookies ... how goddamned marvelous!
Everyone wants to be loved, but is that really love?
Koun Franz is much nicer than I am in asking the question.
Taste is taste and I've got mine ...
In general, I don't like latter-day appreciations of Zen Buddhism. They are too frilly, too self-important, too slickly tricky-dick, too caring and sharing and compassionate without compassion for my taste. Too often they set aside what is important while donning the robes of importance. Sometimes I go so far as to become infuriated. As I say, it's just a matter of taste: I don't like anchovies either.
Nor yet do I like pimping for latter-day appreciations, crooning self-importantly about how powerful or profound or marvelous or on-the-mark they might be. Ick, ick and more ick. It's just my generalized taste.
But for every 'rule' there is an exception and I am not immune.
Today I read Zen monk Koun Franz' blog entry ("My Teacher Doesn't Get Me") and was touched. I was touched not because I thought he was right, especially, but rather by the fact that he took a shot at something I think of as a meat-and-potatoes issue in Zen (or perhaps any Buddhist) practice -- the desire on the part of the student to receive approval and love from his or her teacher.
Imagine: If love and approval on the part of the teaching were all Zen practice amounted to, how much better off could the student possibly be? Would s/he really be able to thank the teacher or would s/he instead simply be reconfirmed in the same old mind-set that brought him/her to Zen practice in the first place ... and Zen practice could be reduced to a self-aggrandizing hug festival? Tea and cookies ... how goddamned marvelous!
Everyone wants to be loved, but is that really love?
Koun Franz is much nicer than I am in asking the question.
5
Comments
One kind lady went on about how one day maybe she will be able to become Buddhist and the teacher coddled her on the subject, praising her efforts... If you could have seen the look of craving in the lady's eyes, you may have felt what I did. Like a fool, lol.
I love them and may go meditate with them again but if I volunteer I'll do it at a hospital.
(TNH)
Seriously, though, I remember getting frustrated at our
ordained facilitator because I wasn't 'getting him'.
After he shared his own personal story, (that made me cry),
and HE felt comfortable enough to joke with me...
We are gooood!
I think we get each other now.
He says I "always got something to say" hahaha....true... hahaha
I'm trying to learn to be quiet.....
The hardest lesson to learn is to trust in the Guru's unconditional, but non-referential love for you, his student. Dilgo Khyentse once said that the relationship is "beyond meeting and parting".
I haven't seen my guru is years. A close friend saw him in San Antonio over ther weekend and I'll be having dinner with my friend tomorrow night to hear all about it. I'm sure it will be a meeting of jealousy and wonder and that's a part of the rather unconventional relationship I have.
Part of the teacher's job is to help us work through our neurosises - like what we want, what we like, our preconceived notions and to in gereral aid us in awakening. Sometimes that job may cloud or dimish our trust in the guru's compassion, but that's a part of it. Tibetn Buddhist teaching are replete with these unusual relationships - Tilopa and Naropa, Marpa and Milarepa and so on. These were not conventional relationships. Milarepa made several stone towers at Marpa's direction, only to have to tear them down and rebuild them. Are such requests from someone with compassion? A conventional relationship might indicate not, but that back-breaking labor contributed to Awakening, so .......
It's quite natural to think the teacher doesn't care, or he has not love/compassion, that he just a jerk or a bully that "doesn't get me".
I think the purpose of the teacher is to help you learn to get over the teacher.
@Chaz..wonderful....Not the whole story but in Zen it should be on the front gate right after "put your slippers straight".
What is love/compassion from a teacher who is trying to show you how to free yourself from the human condition? If the human condition is that innate expression of inadequacy and separation that fosters our self and other attitudes, is a teachers job to salve such pains or to leave them be as a truth for the student to face?
My teacher is now my meditation and anyone I meet so my memories long ago of what it's like to look for everything in one person (teacher) being might be questionable.
Thanx and well put!
In saying "get over", I didn't mean leaving a teacher. What I'm refering to is letting go of all the conceptual bullshit, neuroses, and spiritual materialism that often confuses the relationship we have with a teacher.
In TB, the role of the teacher/guru in a student's path is of paramont importance. This doesn't mean the teacher is put on a pedestal, or we become fawning sycophants, blindling reacting to every word spoken by the guru. What we need to realize, and this can be so hard for all of us, is that the guru is supposed to guide the student to an awakened state. If that's a gentle word, that's fine, but we must also have an open heart so when he "smacks us on the head with his shoe" we are not so overcome by our own prejudices that we fail to see the lesson.
It can be virtualy anything. Even hitting the student with a shoe.
It's pretty hard to have an obsequeous relationship with someone who just hit you with his Converse All-Star.
The latter. Without question. The teacher doesn't make you feel better. The teacher leads you to Awakening. To do that he/she must point out the truth - left out in the open, naked, unadorned, raw and juicy.
I think another purpose of the teacher is to TRY to mislead you and if you follow, then that shows that you haven't understood yet. But if he tries to mislead you and you kill him instead of following, then you get the teachers approval! Especially so with koan practice.
Of course the best kind of teachers IMO intuitively do whatever is best for that particular student. If a student needs to be coddled and that is what would be most helpful to them, then the teacher will coddle them. If the student needs to be kicked in the ass and that is what would be most helpful to them, the teacher will kick them in the ass!
you I don't need an ass kicking or a shoe in the head to teach me ..
.....that's some unskilfull stuff, IMO.
But consider ....
If your guru smacked you on the forehead with his sandle and in that moment you achieve enlightenment, as did Naropa, how is that unskillfull?
There's also the "Keisaku" tradition of Zen where the meditator is struck with a flat stick in order to reinvigorate the meditator. Skillful means or ......
Perhaps you can ask your teacher if you can name him here.....
I'd love to know where monastic chants of KILL, KILL, KILL, could be avoided.
It's not the bathroom mirror's fault.
No flat sticks either.
Show me an object...make a point.
I'm right here. Look at me.
Right in the eyeballs.
Talk to me...I'll either
listen or I won't. I'll either apply the lesson or I won't.
That's as real as it gets.
Don't hit me 'cause you've
run out of ways to communicate. That would not do.
Everybody may say that...but I can show you better than
I can tell you.
The thing is, it's your sensibilities, your conceptualizations, your opinions, likes and dislikes that are, in part, keeping you from the ultimate realization. Sometimes, simply saying "Wake Up" doesn't work. Sometimes a gentle shake will do the trick. Sometimes you need more drastic measures.
If you want to limit your opportunities, it's your karma.
Just give me my Dharma ticket and I'll be on
my way....... Have a good day, officer.
I'll do better next time.....
If this kill kill kill teaching is being promoted by your teacher, then telling me who he/she is gives me a chance to doge his/her place of teaching but it would be polite if you asked him/her first if it was OK to publicly name him/her here first.
And is the trainee who survives this teaching the winner or the loser?
“in the universal womb that is boundless space
all forms of matter and energy occur
as flux of the four elements,
but all are empty forms, absent in reality:
all phenomena, arising in pure mind, are like that.
just as dream is a part of sleep,
unreal in its arising,
so all and everything is pure mind,
never separated from it,
and without substance or attribute.
experience is neither mind nor anything but mind;
it is a vivid display of emptiness, like magical illusion,
in the very moment inconceivable and unutterable.
all experience arising in the mind,
at its inception, know it as emptiness!”
― Longchenpa
:eek2:
The trainee who survives this teaching is neither the winner nor the loser because he no longer cares about winning and losing. The trainee who survives this teaching has left the playing field behind altogether and has entered into the deathless realm. There are no games of living or dying in the deathless realm as there is no life and no death, no being born and no dying.
Damn!
I'll explain it another way....
I disagree that I'm 'limiting' myself. I'm also not about
to take a shoe to the forehead to find out. haha
I am trying not to judge those who have...if you needed drastic measures...
who am I to say, it didn't work...Just not my preference for
learning, I suppose. I also have not been exposed to that
kind of intention/behavior.....not in my temple or monastery....
long story short....just my opinion...I don't think that kind of teaching is
effective...for several reasons. I gather you think it is..... for several reasons.
That's ok......
Spanking or no spanking the kids...the debate will go on........
But seriously I agree.
p.s. But before anyone freaks out about me telling the Buddhist teacher to STFU, (LOL) it's called "dharma combat" and it's pretty common zen thing for people who might be reading this who don't know much about zen. And if you are able to kill the teacher completely, you emerge victorious! And then people start calling you "zen master" and you sit on the other side of the room now. Unfortunately, my teacher is still alive. Perhaps one of these days I will be able to chop his head right off.
bruise, and I'm no better off? Ouch...now I'm just mad and hurt.
If the opportunities were that easy...people would be lined up
for an ass kickin' lololol
Maybe that's why they invented UFC...hahaha
One is enough.
More people might be lined up, except most people, like yourself, have some narrow preconceptions about what this is about.
The Buddha was a deadbeat dad. Walked out on his family in the middle of the night. left a wife without her husband, an infant son without a father, a father without an heir and a people without their prince. How can some low-life scum like that be a Buddha? You follow that guy's "teaching"?
And you object to getting hit on the head with a shoe?
Right.
I thought I was pretty open to what you were saying...
I'm sorry if I came across as narrow....
I'm not being a smart-ass here....I mean it.
I thought I was mindful of saying MY experience
and thought...just as you did.
You started with the converse joke, so to be honest...
I didn't think the sandal/ bruise reference would get to you...
Sorry.
@Chaz
like boot camp. BTW...I took a couple ass-kickin's in bootcamp. My
feeling and reaction was the same at the time. It didn't work for
me...and I didn't re-enlist. Sandals are for babies....try a boot, hahaha
Also got it with my mattress. The whole thing. You heard me right.
I agree....84,000 doors...
Insisting that a good teacher is one who teaches the same cookie-cutter way for all students doesn't make a lot of sense.