Advice Regarding Spiritual Teachers July 3, 2009
Posted by Philip Ryan in : General , trackbackIn our Spring 2000 issue, the scholar Alexander Berzin examined the guru-disciple relationship in the West. He wrote:
With a new millennium at hand, many Westerners called for a purely Western Buddhism, free of irrelevant religious and cultural trappings of the East. Differentiating the essence from the trappings, however, is never simple. People sometimes discard important factors in haste, without deeply examining the possible effects. Consequently, furious debate flared up between “traditionalists” and “modernists” within the Western Buddhist community. Debates included the language to use for performing ritual practices and the place of belief in rebirth in following the Buddhist path.
Today, the student-teacher relationship as understood and developed in the West needs reexamination. However, any approach at restructuring needs to avoid two extremes. The first is justifying the deification of the teacher to the point that it encourages a cult mentality and whitewashes abuse. The second is justifying the demonization of the teacher to the point that paranoia and distrust prevent the benefits to be gained from a healthy disciple-mentor relationship. In trying to prevent the first extreme, we need great care not to fall to the second.
Read the rest, from Tricycle’s archives, which go back to our first issue in 1991.
Comments»
The question: why you posted this old article? Do you know that something is happening out there?
Everything born must die, including perceptions and ideas. To think that buhhdim can somehow be left out of this evolutionary process is to go against the grain of nature, or fight against the acceptance of what is. How can we preach one thing and say another? Why should we think that a concept, no matter how old and sacred, should not be discarded if it is no longer useful? Gold is a mineral as is lead. One is believed to be more valuable then the other and is therefore, treated with great respect to the point that people gladly kill each other over possesion of it. Yet in the end, it’s just a mineral, just like lead. The value of gold is all in the mind, as are concepts and ideas. For Buddhism to evolve, grow, and prosper, it must change, much in the way Christianity has. Something I would like to see as a westerner, I must admit, is the veil of secrecy removed that distorts what is so great about buddhism.
Do not hold on to what you have. Let it go, and be done with it. Letting go is not about giving-up. It’s about accepting what is and staying at peace. Who cares if someone wants to start their own version of Buddhism and call it Slowism? Good for them in my opinion. With any hope that person will blaze a trail to the top of MT. Heaven and bring along millions of souls with him or her. No one will forget about the buddha and what he did for us. No one will forget how it was done back in the day. This country was founded by people that wore false wooden teeth and only bathed once in while and no running water or bathrooms in their homes. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, George Washington, etc. were all great people. They lived under these conditions. Does that mean we should still be living as they did for the sake of tradition? As my brother likes to say, ” It’s time to crawl out of the water and evolve.”
As for the student teacher aspect of it, that is an illusion. Teachers are important, but if they are honest, they will tell you that they are still learning and growing and sometimes just as stupified as the student is as to why things are the way they are. Why does God allow the raping and maming and abuse of women and children all over the world to continue? Why does the axe murderer get away with it while the Saint in the corner helping the needy get run over by the drunk driver? Because God sees all of life as action and reaction. Up,down, sideways, left, right. Hard, fast, slow. It’s all neutral in His eyes. There is no good way, bad way, right way, or wrong way The only thing God really cares about in my opinion, is keeping life in balance. If you are in His way when something needs to be done, then you will go down. College degree, wife and kids, lots of money, no money, good person, bad person, whatever. When it’s time for God to respond the needs of the world as a whole hopefully we have made a will or said goodbye to the ones that we love because make no mistake about it, our live’s will be spared not by the grace of God but by the sheer dumb luck of how life is sometimes. The next time, we might not be so lucky. So pray, and be thankful and let go of whatever fight you need to engage in because in the end, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter one little bit on the grand scheme of thingS. It’s our resistance to what is that causes our suffering. Resisting what cannot be changed is foolish. Freedom comes from the acceptance of what is. As a buddhist, nothing should be more imortant than accepting what cannot be changed, ever, no matter how hard we try to control to make it so. Isn’t that why we meditate, to help us accept what is? That’s why I do it. With any luck, I will be able to do it again, and again, and again, until I go beyond caring much about anything other than finding the time to sit back down again.
adam sounds like a christian trying to convience some one he knows all about the Dhamma, not to be confrontational but When has “god” ever fit into the picture in buddhism the Buddha taught that these things should be put aside for they cant be known and are irrevilant to the path. I learned from a good professor to keep it simple stupid; the Buddha taught many things but we must keep with the simple basics: the four noble truths, 8 fold path, the precepts,etc, etc. Traditions hold a valuable place in Buddhism, going for refuge is not taken lightly, its a commitment. The precepts, staying with the breath, chanting, bowing all help us keep humility, and to stay focused on the dhamma. I agree there are those who care only about the the ritualistic practices, making merit and so on, the key is to balance the two remembering whats important in all of it, true this sounds so beginner basic but thats what we should all come back to at times dont you think.
Leah, sorry I didn’t notice this string earlier but without judging ol’ Adam directly, I myself have found that there are people from faith-based belief systems that lurk around Buddhist blogs employing various tactics to lead, cajole, or deceive us pagans into their ‘true religions.’ The ones I find especially tricky are the ones who insert ridiculous ‘facts’ about the Dharma- you never know if they are wrong, deliberate, or a true reflection of some off-the-wall but still sincerely Buddhist sanga out there. Good catch and may we all maintain eternal vigilance, etc!
я хочу посмотреть:)))