i wanted to just very quickly comment on the aforementioned subject of 'a good teacher'. i remember when i first came to Buddhadharma and i would read all these wonderful personal accounts of followers' appreciation for their teachers and samghas. truth is, at that time reading such words felt like picking at an open wound. the abscence of a teacher in my own practice and path was keenly felt and each time i recited the three refuges, my heart would sigh a little as i came to the words "i go for refuge to samgha". it's a hard path treading the Dharma alone (of course, it is frequently hard regardless but how much more so without a good teacher)...perhaps not impossible but certainly i feel beyond my limited scope. and so i sympathise with all those yet to encounter their teacher, yet to find a sangha and can only really say i've been there too, as have many others, we know what it's like so please do not be discouraged.
at the same time though, there is quite a tendency in today's age to adopt an attitude of go-it-alone, rough-it-out stoicness. quiet a few of my non-buddhist friends who have shown a curiousity to my path have asked why, if the Buddha had no teachers (a not entirely correct assumption) should we then follow his teachings and subsequently seek out a teacher/master/guru for help and guidance? i can't but wonder though, whether this line of questioning, maybe on a subtle and not immediately apparent level is just another of oh-so-many mechanisms set up by our ego sense of self when it encounters a teaching that threatens to loosen its stranglehold - "if i am going to seek freedom from ego-attachment, then i am going to do it by myself, my own way"? in that sense we can then settle into the nice and comforting illusion of loosening the stranglehold, all the while merely re-inforcing and strengthening it.
regardless, when we are led to encounter the compassion of Buddhadharma then we can't help but feel a huge sense of shame at how petty and foolish these self-calculating mechanisms we've set in place for ourselves really are. and at the same we realise how indebted to everyone and everything around us we are. how dependent we are on something infinitely greater than our small sense of self. at these times we are made to realise how truly precious and valuable a good teacher and Dharma friends are and enabled all the more to turn for refuge to Buddha, Dharma and Samgha with a renewed sincerity and clarity.
namu amida butsu
Yes, yes, I agree with everything you say here about teachers. I've seen a lot of people go from teacher to teacher just picking up a bit here and there as suits them, or else trying to get what they need from books. But the ones who go really deep have found a true teacher and dedicated themselves -- not to the teacher but to their own Buddha-nature which they can now see through its reflection in their teacher.
ReplyDeleteI think many people are afraid of this dedication because they don't understand what the dedication is really to and think they must become a slave to the teacher's ideas. But it has nothing to do with ideas.
In my case, my initial awakening was spontaneous but without a true teacher, I wouldn't have understood its true significance because Truth is outside thought. So I needed a teacher to point and say, "This is what you realized." That teacher was a now-deceased Shogyoji priest. I still read his words in my journals I kept then, and now, thirty years later, as I go back and re-read what he said, I understand on a deeper level than before. He was my first teacher and I'm eternally grateful to both to him and to my subsequent teacher for manifesting the Light that is in all of us, so that I could see it.
"I think many people are afraid of this dedication because they don't understand what the dedication is really to and think they must become a slave to the teacher's ideas. But it has nothing to do with ideas."
ReplyDeletei think that's very true. it's like one end of an extreme, the other being people so eager for a teacher and some guidance that they'll accept anything without pause to exercise caution and investigate first.
i guess it can be a tricky balance and i feel lucky in that sense.